rothers finally
examined his spear and learned the reason for its superiority. In the
same way they learned how to spear fish. They could strike and wound and
sometimes kill--but they could not with their smooth spears draw the
fish from the waters of the coral caves. But Maui the youngest made
barbs, so that the fish could not easily shake themselves loose. The
others soon made their spears like his.

The brothers were said to have invented baskets in which to trap eels,
but many eels escaped. Maui improved the basket by secretly making an
inside partition as well as a cover, and the eels were securely trapped.
It took the brothers a long time to learn the real difference between
their baskets and his. One of the family made a basket like his and
caught many eels. Then Maui became angry and chanted a curse over him
and bewildered him, then changed him into a dog.

The Manahiki Islanders have the legend that Maui made the moon, but
could not get good light from it. He tried experiments and found that
the sun was quite an improvement. The sun's example stimulated the moon
to shine brighter.

Once Maui became interested in tattooing and tried to make a dog look
better by placing dark lines around the mouth. The legends say that one
of the sacred birds saw the pattern and then marked the sky with the red
lines sometimes seen at sunrise and sunset. An Hawaiian legend says that
Maui tattooed his arm with a sacred name and thus that arm was strong
enough to hold the sun when he lassoed it. There is a New Zealand legend
in which Maui is made one of three gods who first created man and then
woman from one of the man's ribs.

The Hawaiians dwelling in Hilo have many stories of Maui. They say that
his home was on the northern bank of the Wailuku River. He had a strong
staff made from an ohia tree (the native apple tree). With this he
punched holes through the lava, making natural bridges and boiling
pools, and new channels for its sometimes obstructed waters, so that the
people could go up or down the river more easily. Near one of the
natural bridges is a figure of the moon carved in the rocks, referred by
some of the natives to Maui.

Maui is said to have taught his brothers the different kinds of fish
nets and the use of the strong fibre of the olona, which was much better
than cocoanut threads.

The New Zealand stories relate the spear-throwing contests of Maui and
his brothers. As children, however, they were not allo