had very correct notions of orientation,[1] they would know full well that their S.W. course to N.Z. must necessitate the adoption of a different direction for Hawaiki—the spirit land—from that they held in Central Polynesia. And hence the spirits gather at Cape Reinga, as being the nearest point to the old "spirits' road," by which their ancestors' spirits went back to the spirit land. Colonel Collins in his "History of New South Wales" (published at the end of the 18th century) gives a sketch map of New Zealand drawn from information supplied by Maoris, who in 1793 were taken to Norfolk Island to teach the convicts how to dress flax. On this map is drawn the " spirits' road" which follows the ranges from the south of New Zealand to Te Reinga, near the North Cape. Many stories have the Maoris of the doings of the spirits on their way to the sacred Pohutukawa tree growing at Te Reinga, from which the spirits dropped down into the chasm that led under the sea to spirit land.
In Samoa we find the same ideas: the spirits travelled from the east by the mountain backbone (tuasivi) of the islands to the extreme western point of the group, where, at Fale-lupo, they dived into the sea on their way to spirit-land—in their case named Pulotu.
It was the same at Rarotonga, and Mangaia Islands; the spirits passed to the west, and there "jumped off" from the Pua tree and dived beneath the ocean on their way to Avaiki, or spirit-land, many instances of which will be found in the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill's works.
- ↑ A very striking illustration of the powers of the Polynesians in respect to direction, is furnished by Captain Cook, who, on his first voyage took from Tahiti a native priest named Tupaea, with the intention of letting him see the wonders of the world. Cook states that after many months—even after having circumnavigated New Zealand, and passed up the eastern shores of Australia—if Tupaea was asked to point out the direction of Tahiti, he could always do so correctly.
