Maui. Each
boasted of and described the beauties and merits of his island. While
they were conversing, Maui called for his friends the birds. They
gathered around the house and fluttered among the leaves of the
surrounding trees. Soon their sweet voices filled the air on all sides.
All the people wondered and worshiped, thinking they heard the fairy or
menehune people. It was said that Maui had painted the bodies of his
invisible songsters and for a long time had kept the delight of their
flashing colors to himself. But when the visitor had rejoiced in the
mysterious harmonies, Maui decided to take away whatever veil shut out
the sight of these things beautiful, that his bird friends might be
known and honored ever after. So he made the birds reveal themselves
perched in the trees or flying in the air. The clear eyes of the god
first recognized the new revelation, then all the people became dumb
before the sweet singers adorned in all their brilliant tropical
plumage.

The beautiful red birds, iiwi and akakani, and the birds of glorious
yellow feathers, the oo and the mamo, were a joy to both eye and ear and
found high places in Hawaiian legend and story, and all gave their most
beautiful feathers for the cloaks and helmets of the chiefs.

The Maoris of New Zealand say that Maui could at will change himself
into a bird and with his feathered friends find a home in leafy
shelters. In bird form he visited the gods of the under-world. His
capricious soul was sensitive to the touch of all that mysterious life
of nature.

With the birds as companions and the winds as his servants Maui must
soon have turned his inventive mind to kite making.

The Hawaiian myths are perhaps the only ones of the Pacific Ocean which
give to any of the gods the pleasure and excitement of kite flying.
Maui, after repeated experiments, made a large kite for himself. It was
much larger than any house of his time or generation. He twisted a long
line from the strong fibers of the native plant known as the olona. He
endowed both kite and string with marvelous powers and launched the
kite up toward the clouds. It rose very slowly. The winds were not
lifting it into the sky.

[Illustration: The Home of the Winds, Hilo Coast.]

Maui remembered that an old priest lived in Waipio valley, the largest
and finest valley of the large island, Hawaii, on which he made his
home.

This priest had a covered calabash in which he compelled the winds to
hide