bodies subsiding first, and the lightest, where the forces of the river-current and the waves counteract each other, so as to cause still water. If, By examining the annexed sketch of the bay and river of Waikouaiti, it will be seen that the rocky headland, to the west of which the river now discharges itself, is separated from the adjacent table-land by a narrow space of sand, elevated but little above high water mark. now, the dotted lines traced at the base of this table-land, be supposed to represent the course of the river in times past, the spot marked D, where the bones lie, would correspond with the former position of a bar at its mouth; and, if these bones, or rather the birds whose skeletons they formed, were at some time or otherperhaps at the season of an extraordinary flood, perhaps on different occasions-swept away from some resort inland, they might have been brought down by the river, and deposited in this position, together with other matters of a similar specific gravity, such as the peat-like substance above described appears to have been. The birds whose bones* were found here, belonged to wingless species, like the ostrich, and might therefore easily have been surprised by the waters of a flood, in a place whence their escape was impossible. * Similar bones have been found in other parts of the Middle Island, and on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand; but none, I believe, to the northward of the East Cape. Professor Owen, who has examined a great number of those which have, at different times, been carried to England, has determined them to have belonged to several varieties of two distinct genera of struthious birds, named by him Dinornis and Palapteryx. The native name, "Moa," is the same which, in Polynesia, commonly signifies the domestic fowl. It would seem, therefore, that some of these birds must have been still in existence, when the ancestors of the New Zealanders first colonized these islands; and so their traditions relate. CHAPTER VIII. VOYAGE TO THE SOUTHWARD-MOLYNEUX BAY-WRECK OF THE BRIG LUNAR-EXTRAORDINARY WHALING EXPLOIT-THE BLUFF -AWARUA-THE SOUTHERN PLAINS-KORETI OR NEW RIVERWHALING STATION AT APARIMA-TUHAWAIKI'S SCHOONERRUAPUKE-A WHALER'S NARRATIVE-RAKIURA OR STEWART'S ISLAND-SHORES OF FOVEAUX'S STRAITS-CLIMATE-ELIGIBLE SITE FOR COLONISTS. FINDING Mr. J— ready to sail in his schooner to visit the whaling stations to the southward, I resolved to avail myself of so good an opportunity of seeing that part of the island. We left Waikouaiti one afternoon, and by the following morning were abreast of the southern point of a wide bay, named Molyneux, into which the large river Matau flows. This river takes its source in four lakes in the interior.* The master of our schooner knew the bay * Vide ch. xi. |