the Tahitian ifi, ihi, or chestnut,[1] called also by the Rarotongans mape. The story says that two new foods having been discovered in Avaiki, the use of vari, or rice, was abandoned.
Notwithstanding the fanciful dress in which we find these stories in the original, they point strongly to the first arrival of the people in a strange land, where new kinds of food were discovered.
The bread fruit is stated by De Candolle in his "Origin of Cultivated Plants" to be a native of Java. "The bread fruit is evidently a native of Java, Amboyna, and the neighbouring islands; but the antiquity of its cultivation in the whole of the archipelago, proved by the number of varieties, and the facility of propagating it by buds and suckers, prevent us from knowing its history accurately." The rice of course grows in Java at the present day, and I hold the probability is the Polynesians first introduced it there from India; and it is also tolerably certain that they brought the bread fruit from Indonesia with them on their migrations, for the varieties now growing in Polynesia are seedless, and can be propagated only by suckers. It is clearly not a native of Polynesia.
At this time the people were apparently divided into tribes, for we find the names mentioned of Ati-Apai and Ngati-Ataranga, both Ati and Ngati being tribal prenominals.
The hero Māui is said above to have been the son of Tangaroa. It has long been thought by some people that Māui, or one of the Māuis, was in reality an early voyager into the Pacific, who through his exploits has been clothed
- ↑ Inocarpus edulis, which grows in Indonesia, but is thought to be a native of America. It is probable that the Polynesians brouglit the seeds of this tree with them into the Pacific, where it is believed to be a cultivated plant.
