hmmmm

“I have seen natives on the North Somali coast who, like many Polynesians, dyed their hair red with chunam, and wore loin-cloths, while the women in their dances went through similar movements to those of the Maori at a haka. On a sandy beach on the southern coast of Arabia I once saw some fishermen curing—that is, drying—sharks, hung on rails in the sun, exactly as is done by the Maori. page 32 Some of the Arab women had blue lips. Besides these resemblances, many of the customs and habits of these people correspond with those of the Maori, hence my conclusion that the ancestors of the Maori were blood relations of the Cushites and Phœnicians, that they spoke a cognate language, and, like the latter, migrated from the Persian Gulf.

In support of this assumption there is the Maori tradition that the Arawa canoe on her voyage from Hawaiki was nearly engulfed in the throat of a great monster, called the Parata, which lived in the sea at the extreme boundary of the horizon. The original of this Parata, in my opinion, is the mouth of the Euphrates, which the Arabs call Furat or Pharat.

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