WANAKI’S FOREWORD.
As I sit down to write this history of strange adventures the words of my aged friend, the chief and tohunga Te Makawawa, come up in my mind:
“O Son, the word of our ancient law is death to any who reveals the secrets that are hidden in the Brow of Ruatapu. The secret of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn; the Mystery of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit, the traditions of far time preserved in the heart of the Great Rock—all, everything, is a death-blow returning on the head of him who reveals it. Yet, O Son of the Great Ocean of Kiwa, I, who was once the guardian priest of the Temple of Hia and the hereditary curser of the Vile Ones of the Abyss of Huo, now show these things to you, for I am weary of climbing the snows of Ruahine and long for rest and Tane’s Living Waters. The Great Tohungas of the Earth have taught me in my sleep with words like the voice of the wind in the forest trees: ‘O Tohunga of the Great Rock, the mystery of Hinauri is not for the Maori unless thou tell it first to the Sons of the Sea, but know, if thou tell it, thou must die.’ Therefore, Son, I show it to you, for, what though I fear the eye of the fierce Ngaraki, I fear not death. Friend! perchance, when I have descended by the sacred Pohutukawa root, you, too, will tire of life and tell this thing to your brethren, ‘but know, if thou tell it, thou must die.’ ”
Well may I pause here, for after what I have seen in the Brow of Ruatapu, in the Temple of Hia, and in the Abyss of Huo, disbelief in the ancient laws of the priesthood of the Great Rock is not for me. But for me is the truth of the aged tohunga’s words, and for me also is the rest that he longed for and the living waters of Tane; for so clearly do I read the truth of a civilised world in the truth of Maori lore, that I believe when I am bathed in those Waters of Life and pass through the darkness into the Light, I shall look into her eyes again—the dark eyes of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the Bright One who came out of ancient night to give a sign, and withdrew again into the skies, leaving my world all desolate. The mystery of her coming was that sign, and I will reveal it, partly because the sorrow of her going is such that the penalty of death is welcome to me, and partly because a voice—I know not if it is the voice of the Great Tohungas of the Earth—teaches me, too, in dreams, that my brethren, the Sons of the Sea, of whom the dark-skinned children of Ira might with justice ask much, should hear and consider this Sign of Power. Not to be buried at last in oblivion has it been nursed and guarded by an unbroken priesthood of hereditary succession extending back, through Maori and pre-Maori races, through the dark night of Time, even to the glorious sunset of a former Day. Not for naught has it come down from a remote age, whence, O Reader, you have heard only the voices of seers telling, in whispered tones, of
“Mighty pre-Adamites who walked the earth
Of which ours is the wreck.”