I.

Old Colonial says that no book about Northern New Zealand, past or present, would be complete without some special reference to Maori manners. So, with his larger experience to aid me, I am going to try and depict them, in brief and to a limited extent. Perhaps the best way to begin is by sketching the early history of the race, so far as it is known. Also, we will be pedantic for the nonce, and such words of the native tongue as are used shall be free from European corruptions. Thus, to begin with, there being no "s" in the language, which only consists of fourteen letters, and no plural termination, Maori (pr. mowry) stands for either one or many, and Pakeha (white man, stranger, pr. Pah-kay-hah) signifies either the singular or plural number.[2]

The Maori are a Turanian race, belonging to the Polynesian family of the Malay branch. According to their own traditions, they came to New Zealand from some island in the South Sea, known to them as Hawaiiki. Probably they had migrated in the first instance from the Malay Peninsula. A certain number of large canoes landed the pilgrim fathers of the race on the shores of Ahinamaui,[3] the names of which are remembered, each of the tribes tracing its ancestry to one. The date of this incursion is reckoned to have been about A.D. 1400; the calculation being arrived at by comparison of certain genealogical tally-sticks kept among the tribes.

The Maori would seem to have degenerated from some more civilized condition, as is evidenced by the remains among them of astronomical knowledge, and of a higher political constitution, the basis of which is discoverable in their institution of the tapu. They brought with them to New Zealand the kumera (sweet potato), the taro (bread-root), the hue (gourd), the seeds of the koraka tree, the dog, the pukeko (swamp-hen), and one or two of the parrot tribe. They found in New Zealand an aboriginal race of men, inferior to themselves. They also found several species of gigantic birds, called by them moa, and by naturalists Dinornis, Aptornis, and Palapteryx.

The Maori, of course, made war upon both man and bird, the latter for food from the first, and the former probably for the same purpose eventually. They had succeeded in exterminating both before Europeans had a chance of making acquaintance with them. Bones of the moa are frequently found, and, till recently, it was believed that living specimens existed in the recesses of forest and mountain. But of the aboriginal race no trace remains, unless, as some have thought, there be an admixture of their blood in the few Maori of Otago and Stewart Island.

New Zealand was discovered by Abel Jan van Tasman, in 1642, to whom it owes its name—a name, by the way, that may one day be changed to Zealandia, perhaps, just as New Holland has become Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania. The natives received the Dutch navigator with hostility, massacring a boat's crew. He, therefore, drew off and left, merely coasting for a short distance. No one else visited the country until 1769, when Cook arrived in it for the first time.

Captain Cook was likewise received with hostility by the Maori, on his first landing in Poverty Bay. But afterwards, in the Bay of Plenty, Mercury Bay, and the Bay of Islands, he met with better treatment, and was able to establish friendly relations with certain tribes. He spent altogether nearly a year in New Zealand, between 1769 and 1777, in which last year he left for Hawaii, to meet his death there in Kealakekua Bay. He circumnavigated the islands, which had previously been supposed to form part of a great Antarctic continent. He also bestowed upon the Maori the pig and the potato, and has left us some still interesting accounts of what he observed in the country.

Subsequently to Cook's last visit, and in the intervals between his voyages, other explorers touched here. De LunÉville, De Surville, Crozet, D'Urville, and Du Fresne, the French navigators, followed in the footsteps of Tasman and Cook. Then, too, whalers began to call along the coasts; and, by-and-by, traders from Sydney adventured hither for timber, and flax (phormium), and pigs, and smoked heads. But it was a risky thing in those days to do business with the Maori. Any fancied slight or injury was resented most terribly. Several ships were lost altogether, their crews being butchered and eaten; while boats' crews and individual mariners were lost by others.

In 1772, Du Fresne, with fifteen of his men, was killed in the Bay of Islands. He had aroused the wrath of the natives by trespassing on tapu ground; and they also avenged on him an action of De LunÉville's, who had rashly put a chief in irons. In 1809, the ship Boyd was taken in Whangaroa Harbour, and all her company killed, because the captain had flogged a Maori thief. Again, in 1816, we hear of the American brig Agnes meeting with a similar fate in Poverty Bay, or thereabouts.

From the end of last century down to 1840, a few individual white men took up their residence among the Maori here and there. These Pakeha-Maori, as they are called, were runaway sailors, or such as had been shipwrecked or made prisoners, or were wild, adventurous characters who preferred the savage life to the restraints of civilization. They married Maori women, raised families, and conformed to all the native customs, sometimes becoming chiefs and leaders in war. When some fitful intercourse was established with Sydney, these men were the medium of trade, and achieved immense importance in that way. It soon became the fashion among the chiefs of tribes for each to have his own special Pakeha-Maori. Force was sometimes resorted to to obtain these men. They were captured and compelled to remain, while wars between rival tribes were conducted for the possession of them. Rutherford, a survivor of the Agnes, was one such. His experiences of twelve years' residence among the Maori are recorded in Lord Brougham's compilation. Judge Maning has related the tale of another, at a somewhat later date.

In 1814, as has been elsewhere mentioned, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, together with some other missionaries, landed in the Bay of Islands; and from that event, New Zealand's real history may be said to commence.

The story of Marsden's interest in New Zealand is not without a certain romantic element. He was chaplain to the Government of New South Wales. At Sydney he had many opportunities of hearing of New Zealand, and of the terrible race of fighting man-eaters who inhabited it. Traders spoke freely of all they knew, and the barbarities, treacheries, and fearful deeds of the Maori, much exaggerated, no doubt, were matters of common report. Moreover, individual Maori sometimes shipped as sailors on board the vessels that touched on their coasts; and so Marsden was able to judge of the character of the race from the actual specimens he saw. We may be sure that he was favourably impressed by their evident superiority in every way to the black aborigines of Australia.

Marsden was in England in 1809, and there he vainly endeavoured to awaken sympathy on behalf of the Maori, and to persuade the Christian public to make effort for their help. On his return, he noticed, among the sailors of his ship, a coloured man, very sick and dejected. Him he made acquaintance with, finding him to be Ruatara, a Maori of the chieftain rank, belonging to the Ngapuhi tribe.

Ruatara had had an eventful time of it. In 1805, when a mere lad of eighteen, he had shipped on board a whaler, hoping thereby to see something of the world. In her he was treated badly, being marooned on a desert island for some months, and eventually brought back again to New Zealand, without more experience than a whaling cruise in the South Sea could give him.

But, nothing daunted by these vicissitudes, he again shipped on board a whaler, and in her was carried to London. This was the acme of his desires, for his great idea was to see King George. But, all the time the ship lay in dock, Ruatara was scarcely allowed to go on shore, even, and was not permitted to carry his wishes into execution. He appears to have been brutally ill-treated, and was finally turned over to a convict ship, the Ann, bound for Port Jackson. On board of her Marsden sailed, and saw and took this forlorn wretch, ill and disappointed, under his protection.

Arrived in Sydney, Marsden took Ruatara to his own house, and kept him there as his guest for some months, doing his best, meanwhile, we may be sure, to enlighten the mind of the barbarian whom Providence had thrown in his way. Finally, he took means to send Ruatara home to his own country.

The Church Missionary Society, stirred by Marsden's representations, at last sent out a missionary party. But on their arrival in Sydney the members of it hesitated about venturing to New Zealand—the affair of the Boyd, and similar deeds, being just then fresh in the colonial mind. Marsden, however, was not to be daunted.

In 1814 he sent a vessel to the Bay of Islands, loaded with useful presents, and bearing an invitation to Ruatara to visit him once more. It was readily accepted, not only by Ruatara, but also by several other chiefs, including the subsequently famous Hongi Hika, who was uncle to Ruatara. These persons were hospitably entertained by Marsden at his residence at Paramatta. Towards the end of the year, they returned to New Zealand, and with them went Marsden and his companions, landing at Te Puna in December of that year, as has been elsewhere spoken of.

This is the first appearance of the redoubtable Hongi. Both he and Ruatara took the missionaries under their protection, and firmly maintained that attitude as long as they lived. Neither of them embraced Christianity; but Hongi's care for the missionaries is shown in the charge he gave to his successors on his death-bed concerning them, which I have recorded in a previous chapter. Ruatara was a man of much milder disposition than his uncle, though both appeared well-mannered, courteous, amiable, and eminently sagacious when among Europeans. Ruatara would probably have become a convert, had he not died soon after the advent of Marsden.

During this period many of the Maori evinced great desire to travel, and especially to see England and its king. They were ready to undergo any amount of hardship and ill-treatment to accomplish this. Numbers shipped as seamen on board such vessels as would receive them. Sometimes they resorted to amusing tricks in order to get carried to England. Tupei Kupa, for example, a powerful chief in the neighbourhood of Cook Straits, came on board a ship passing along the coast, and resisted all endeavours, even force, to make him return. He was eventually made to serve as a sailor, and seems to have become a general favourite. He resided some time in Liverpool, afterwards being sent home by Government.

Hongi was affected by the same spirit. In 1820 he, accompanied by another chief, Waikato, and under the charge of Rev. Mr. Kendall, visited England. There he was presented to King George, and was made much of. The two chiefs aided Mr. Kendall and Professor Lee in the compilation of the first Maori vocabulary. They returned to Sydney loaded with many and valuable presents.

But in Sydney the true character of Hongi came out. He realized all his property, and converted it into muskets, powder, and ball. With these he sailed joyfully back to his own country. Arrived there, he set about arming his fighting men and instructing them in the use of the new acquisitions. He also became very friendly to such trading vessels as touched on his coasts, giving them cargoes of such produce as the country afforded in return for more arms.

This chief's ambition was to constitute himself king of all New Zealand, just as King George was sovereign over all Britain. His theory of the way to bring this about seems to have been by killing and eating all who opposed the project. There were some thirty tribes of the Maori, and these were divided and subdivided into various little sections. Sometimes a powerful chief was dominant over a large confederation; and, again, each little kainga regarded itself as independent.

Originally, Hongi was ariki (head chief or king) of the Ngapuhi, and ruled over the inhabitants of the districts round the Bay of Islands, and between that and the west coast. As soon as he had returned from England, and had achieved the possession of fire-arms, he converted his previously somewhat loose lordship into a real despotism. He organized a taua (army, regiment, or war-party), and quickly reduced any unruly sections to obedience. Then he attacked the Ngatipo of Whangaroa, the Ngararawa of Whangape, and the Ngaopuri of the North Cape. These he massacred, devoured, and dispersed, swelling the ranks of his army with accessions from among the subdued tribes.

After this, various expeditions, under the command of Hongi, or his sub-chiefs, marched southward to slay and eat all and sundry. The Ngatewhatua, a populous tribe of the Kaipara districts, had to bear the brunt of Hongi's advance, and were almost annihilated. He penetrated a long way south, ever victorious over every one by reason of his superior weapons. There is little doubt that he must have sometimes led an army of as many as five thousand men, mostly armed with muskets. This was a prodigious force for Maori war, irrespective of the enormous advantage of powder and ball over the native merÈ (battle-axe) and patu (a sort of halberd).

Such was the spirit of the Maori, and such their warlike ferocity, that tribes never thought of submitting peaceably, or fled from superior strength. They always fought first. It is difficult to realize, nowadays, the awful carnage that Hongi instituted. Districts were depopulated, tribes annihilated, men, women, and children, in scores and hundreds, were butchered and eaten; pa and kainga were burnt and destroyed.

Far to the south went the bloodthirsty conquerors, even into what afterwards came to be the province of Wellington. Ngapaoa, Ngatewaikato, Ngatimaniapoto, Ngatiawa, and many another tribe felt the full force of Hongi's lust for conquest. Even to the East Cape his terrible warriors came, decimating Ngateurewera and Ngatiporu. Of these latter they once roasted and ate fifteen hundred, at a single one of their cannibal orgies.

But Hongi did not become king of New Zealand after all. He received a wound in battle, which brought him to his death in 1828. In spite of his propensities for war and cannibalism, both of which, one may say, were hereditary in the Maori blood at that time, Hongi would seem to have possessed many good qualities. His intellect was quick and vigorous, and would have distinguished him among any people. His ingenuity was great, both in overcoming difficulties and in the arts which the Maori used, or that had been taught him by Europeans. His bravery was undoubted, and was mingled with much large-hearted generosity. He had good impulses, and was singularly affectionate to his own family. To him missionaries and white traders owed the first footing they obtained in the country, and the ability to hold their own there afterwards.

From the period of Marsden's first visit the labours of the missionaries began to bear fruit, and Christianity spread, at first slowly, but afterwards with marvellous rapidity and completeness. Soon after Hongi's death a more peaceful era commenced: arms were less often employed; cannibalism was given up among christianized tribes; and peaceful arts were more attended to. In 1823, a Wesleyan mission was established, first of all in Whangaroa; and, in 1837, a Roman Catholic one was commenced in Hokianga. By 1840 the whole of the tribes of the Maori were professedly Christian, and had relinquished their old warlike customs.

In 1864 there arose a singular religious revival among the Maori, known by the name of Hau-hau. This was just at the period when the Waikato war was concluded, and when certain sections of various tribes in the interior had declared themselves independent under a king of their own election. Hau-hau was instituted by some of the old tohunga (priests, prophets, and medicine-men), mainly from political motives. They said that as there was an English Church, a Scottish Church, and a Roman Church, that there ought also to be a distinctive Maori Church. They accordingly set to work to form one.

Hau-hau consists of a frenzied form of Christianity, mingled with some observances taken from the Mosaic Law, and comprehending old heathenish usages grafted upon the new order of things. From the extraordinary excitement its professors manifest, some people have thought that mesmeric influence had a part in it.

Hau-hau became a political movement, being inseparably connected with the "king" rebellion. The Kingite Maori have given a good deal of trouble in former years, but have now been quiescent for long. Their territory occupies Kawhia county on the West Coast, being bounded by the Waikato, Waipa, and Mokau rivers, and the sea. Their numbers are but few.

Till lately these rebels held themselves wholly aloof from intercourse with the outside world, and threatened any one who should enter their territory. At last they began to bring produce to the nearest Pakeha market, and to buy stores, though still maintaining their reserve. In 1881 there arose some dispute about land that had been confiscated after the war, but that had not been taken possession of. There was talk of a furious row between the rebels and the settlers. This was magnified by English newspapers into a "threatened Maori war," an absurd piece of ignorance, truly!

The "war" was put an end to the other day, by a few policemen arresting the "King," in the midst of his dominions and surrounded by his subjects, and conveying him off to durance vile at Wellington. A demonstration of Taranaki volunteers was enough. No blood was spilt; no violence offered.

Maori wars are things of the past entirely. When are British journalists going to awake to that fact? Now, settlers outnumber Maori everywhere ten to one. There are roads and railways and steamers, sufficient to convey constabulary to any riotous neighbourhood pretty quickly. But the great point is that the Maori of the present day are decent, quiet, and orderly folk. They are intelligent, and possess as much civilization as would be found in many rural districts of England, Scotland, and Wales—I will not add of Ireland, too, for fear I should be Boycotted! Maori and settler are on perfectly equal terms, and the former know it; moreover, they are not an homogeneous people, but live scattered in small communities. The Kingites, who are the least civilized, and who profess not to acknowledge our authority, showed what they thought of the possibilities of war by their submission to a party of constables the other day. There is no strength among them to make a war if they wished it, which they are much too sagacious to do. Riots, or brigandage, even, in isolated localities, are less to be feared than similar outbreaks in Lancashire or Staffordshire.

To read, as we did a short while ago, in influential London newspapers, that war with the Maori was again imminent, strikes us as excessively ludicrous. "Our shanty" even regards it as a dire insult, and there was some talk among us of going to war ourselves—with the fourth estate in England. Anyhow, it shows how little our friends at home really know about this land of the blest and the free. Have there not been books enough written about it yet?

There are, it is true, a good many Maori who adhere to primitive custom. Here and there you may find a kainga, containing from a score to a hundred souls, where there is not much apparent advance from the state of things fifty years back. But even here you will find that men and women turn out in European clothes, on occasions of state; that the children receive schooling of some sort; that there is a surprising degree of intelligence and knowledge of the great world and its ways; and that there is a fervent, and often dogmatic, Christianity among the inhabitants.

On the other hand, there are Maori of a more cultivated condition, and these have no small influence with their less sophisticated compatriots. Maori members sit in both houses of the Legislature; Maori have votes at elections; there are some comparatively wealthy Maori; there are Maori farmers, store-keepers, hotel-keepers, artisans, policemen, postmen, teachers, and clergymen. There are two or three Maori newspapers, partly written by Maori, for Maori to buy and read. They are no longer to be regarded as savages, or as a distinct race, even. They are but one of the classes of our community.

The present total Maori population is no more than 42,819; and the European population is 463,729. In 1874 the Maori numbered 46,016, so they have decreased considerably since then. But it is probable that the numbers six years ago were not taken with the same accuracy as at the last census, so that it would, perhaps, be too hasty to say that the race has decreased by 3000 during the last six years; yet this estimate cannot be very far from the truth.

There is no doubt that the Maori race are dying out, and that with great rapidity. At the beginning of this century—about 1820—the missionaries estimated their numbers to be 100,000, a guess that most likely fell far short of the truth. The frightful slaughtering that followed the introduction of fire-arms had, no doubt, much to do with the diminution of the population, but evidently that can have no effect at the present day; nor have the wars we have fought with certain tribes, subsequent to 1840, been of such a bloody nature as to be set down among the immediate causes of decrease.

It has been too hastily assumed that the Maori were lessening before the advent of Europeans. It has been erroneously supposed that they were half-starved, and that they had no option but to resort to cannibalism. Both conclusions are certainly mistaken ones, I feel convinced.

In the first place, when the Maori came to New Zealand, four or five centuries ago, only a very limited number could have arrived. A long and hazardous voyage must have been undertaken in frail canoes, and it is not to be supposed that an entire nation could have so migrated. Moreover, it is probable that the immigrants were driven here accidentally, by stress of weather, possibly. Otherwise, if they were able to voyage about so successfully in the open ocean, at will, surely they would have kept up communication with "Hawaiiki," or other islands, which we know they did not.

It seems clear, therefore, that but a few people originated the Maori inhabitants of New Zealand, and as these were certainly at one time very numerous, it is apparent that after their coming they had gone on increasing and multiplying. At what period, and for what reason, did this process of increase become checked, and change to one of decrease?

When Europeans first became acquainted with the country, the Maori had by no means occupied the whole of it, or even nearly so, nor had they exhausted its resources for the support of life. They were cannibals; but it has been abundantly proved that they were not so from necessity. Cannibalism was a part of the ceremonial of war and victory—nothing more. It was never looked upon as a mere means of livelihood.

It is true, that the Maori had no animals except dogs and rats, both of which they ate; but flesh is not an absolute necessity of existence. They had fish of many kinds in marvellous profusion; they cultivated assiduously the kumera and taro, alone sufficient for the support of life. Such crops as these hardly ever fail in this climate. Then there was the fern-root everywhere, a regular article of diet with them, and sundry other roots and herbs. Some writers have assumed that when the moa had been hunted down and destroyed, there was no other food available, and so the tribes turned on each other. This is monstrously absurd. There is no evidence to show that moa were ever so plentiful as to have been a principal part of the food-supply. There is plenty of traditional evidence to prove that other and smaller birds were more generally used as diet. There is no proof that the Maori were ever in want of means of subsistence. As matter of fact they were not. They never knew what famine was, in the sense in which it has at times been understood in Western Ireland or the Hebrides.

Now war, at that prehistoric period, was a very different thing from what it afterwards became, when fire-arms were introduced. From the very earliest time, according to their legends, war was the main employment of the Maori. But their wars were not of a kind to cause large devastation. Usually they were Homeric combats, where one or two persons were slain on either side. Vast preparations were made for an event of this kind. Rival tribes mustered all their strength; and, with much ceremony, the taua of each came together at some appointed place. Then for days there was much talking and boasting, and various single duels, resulting in little or nothing. Eventually a general engagement would ensue. Hundreds might take part in it, but rarely were there a dozen or a score of casualties. So we gather from such accounts as have reached us. Incessant though the inter-tribal conflicts were, they were not of such a murderous sort as to cause large general decrease. Extreme old age was a very frequent thing, among even prominent fighting-men, just as now there are numerous very aged Maori.

So, it would seem that neither war nor want were destroying the race before the coming of the Pakeha; consequently it is not surprising to find that the fact of their decreasing at all at that period is no fact, and is but an opinion, a theory, an assumption that appears to be devoid of any foundation whatsoever.

When fire-arms were introduced, general butcheries commenced. Hongi initiated this era. But other tribes eventually obtained the coveted weapon, and then there was a carnival of blood all through the land. Here we find the first real cause for general decrease. These fearful wars must have enormously diminished the numbers of the race.

But when Christianity laid hold of the Maori, and when colonization came after it, there was no longer any reason left for a decrease among the native population, at least, so one would have thought; yet the numbers of the Maori have been growing less and less with startling rapidity. The decrease that is going on now, and that has been going on since 1840, is evidently not owing to war or to want. Other causes for it must be sought for. The first Maori census was taken in 1874, and now another enumeration has been made, showing a considerable falling off since the other. Scarcely an old settler but will tell of districts he knows, where years ago there was a much larger native population than there is to-day. It is evident that, as civilization advances, and as Pakeha grow more numerous in the country, the Maori are disappearing faster and faster.

Many causes have been assigned for this. The anti-alcoholists—of whom we have many eminent and enthusiastic professors in the colony—of course, put drink down as the chief reason. I do not think it is, myself. Some Maori may drink themselves to death, but, so far as my experience goes, I have found them to be remarkably abstemious as a rule. Many Maori will not touch liquor at all; many more will take a little, but decline to drink excessively. As one such remarked to me once—

"Little rum good. Makee jolly, dance, sing! Much rum bad. Makee sleepy, makee head sore, belly sore, all sore!"

A drunken Maori is comparatively rare in the North, at least, as far as my observation goes. I am rather inclined to take medical evidence on the subject of Maori decrease. Certain diseases, introduced by the Pakeha, have spread among them extensively, and work fatally to their constitutions. The women are thereby rendered less capable of maternity, and the children fewer and more sickly.

A good deal of sentiment has been unnecessarily wasted upon this matter. We do not need to raise a cry of lamentation over the departing Maori. Let him go; we shall get on well enough without him! When the ordinary Englishman refers to the matter, he says—

"They're a splendid race, those Maries! and it's a thousand pities they should be dying out so fast!"

With this commonly begins and ends the sum of his knowledge of the matter. Now, the Maori is not altogether such an absolutely superior person. Relatively to some other aboriginal races—the Australian black, for instance, and perhaps most of the North American tribes—the Maori may truly be described as a splendid race; but compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the Maori is nowhere. He cannot match our physical development nor our intellectual capacity, average compared with average.

So, let the Maori go. We do not wish him to, particularly. We are indifferent about the matter. We would not hurry him on any account. Nay, we will even sympathize with him, and sorrow for him—a little. We are content to know that he will make room for a superior race. It is but the process of Nature's sovereign law. The weaker is giving way to the stronger; the superior species is being developed at the expense of the inferior.

In appearance, the Maori strike you favourably. Their features are good, being quite in Caucasian mould, though inclining a little to coarseness. Their heads are well shaped, their bodies and limbs well developed and muscular. They are somewhat long in the back and short in the leg, as compared with Europeans; and both men and women are able to pikau (hump, or carry on the back and shoulders) great weights for long distances.

The colour of the skin varies. In some it is almost a coppery brown, in others a dusky olive. The hair is black or brown, occasionally reddish. The faces are open and intelligent, capable of much expression, and pleasing when in repose. The eyes are large and full, and the teeth naturally of dazzling whiteness and regularity. Some of the young girls are comely and pretty, but as they grow old they often get repulsively ugly.

The average height is perhaps a little over that of Englishmen; but the Maori are seldom over six feet, and not often below five feet six inches. Deformed persons are to be seen in every kainga, where they are looked upon as, to some extent, privileged by their misfortune.

The moku (tattooing) has gone out of fashion, and is seldom seen on young men now, except among very conservative communities. Plenty of the older men, however, show it, and are still proud of it. The women were never marked much, a line or two about the mouth, and on the chin, was all they were allowed.

The moku was not mere ornament or disfigurement. It had a distinct heraldic meaning, and the practice had attained to quite high art. The designs are most elaborate, and were traced with exceeding care. They consist of concentric lines and geometric devices, each pattern having its peculiar signification. The markings are of a blue colour; they are principally displayed on the face and breast; and they are so deeply set that the skin is ridged and furrowed, looking as if carved.

The lower classes had but little moku, the more intricate and elaborate patterns being reserved for men of rank. The higher a chief was, the more elaboration did his moku display. When a man rose in rank, he received additional decoration; just as civilized governments confer orders, crosses, and stars upon distinguished generals or statesmen. Often the face was so covered that even the nostrils, eyelids, and lobes of the ears were adorned with minute tracery.

The operator who was entrusted with the making of the moku, was a man of great importance, though he might be of the lowest rank. The possession of a skilled artist on skin was thought so much of in the old days, that wars were sometimes waged to determine who should benefit by his talent. He was a sort of R.A., and M.R.C.S., and king-at-arms in combination.

This individual had his cases of instruments, little hoe-shaped chisels and gouges and knives, made of sharks' teeth, flint, bone, and wood. Very neat and beautifully finished weapons they were. The pigments consisted of charcoal, a prepared red earth, and the juice of the hinau tree.

The proud and happy patient was laid down on his back, and forcibly held in position by assistants. Then the operator sketched out the pattern on his face with charcoal. Each line or dot was chiselled in with a suitable tool, a wooden hammer being used to send the blade well into the flesh. The blood of course gushed freely forth, and was scraped off with an implement made for the purpose. The pigments were rubbed into the incisions as these were proceeded with. As may well be supposed, the pain was simply excruciating, but it was considered unmanly to flinch from it.

Subsequent inflammation was generally severe, and might last for weeks, while the whole operation would have to be effected bit by bit, over possibly a year or two. To add to the hero's misery, all this while he was tapu, or unclean, and could not touch food with his hands, or live in a wharÈ (house). Unless he was sedulously attended to by the ladies of his family, as was the proper thing, he would undergo no trifling amount of inconvenience.

The moku served a curious purpose at one time. Clumsy though Maori fingers are, they seem to have a natural aptitude for sketching and carving. So, when the earliest missionaries and others called upon certain chiefs to sign the title-deeds of estates they had bought from them, the Maori did so by drawing little sketches of the moku that adorned their faces. Each said, "That is me, and no one else." These curious autographs are still preserved by the Societies in London.

It was the practice in the old days to preserve the heads of distinguished men who were slain in battle. This was done by smoking and drying them in such a way as to keep the emblazoned skin intact. As soon as traders began to come from Sydney, they were ready to barter valuable commodities for these relics, which commanded high fancy prices among the museums and curio-hunters of Europe.

Great inducements were, therefore, offered to trading Maori to bring heads into market. The product seemed to be going to bring wealth into the country, and industrial enterprise in this direction speedily quickened. Trading tribes went to war on all sides, in order that the supply of heads might be fully up to the demand for them.

When this resource failed, some ingenious and business-like potentate hit upon a splendid device. Procuring the services of a first-class artist, he caused him to adorn a number of slaves with the most elaborate and high-art designs. Nothing was to be spared; they were to be decorated in the grandest style.

When a ship came that way again, and inquiry was made by her captain as to the ruling prices and possible supply of heads, among other commodities, the new commercial scheme of these simple people was at once propounded to him. The chief caused a row of emblazoned slaves to be marshalled before the trader, and told that gentleman to pick out those he admired. Further, he was assured that such as he deigned to choose should be at once decapitated, their heads cured secundem artem, and delivered on board his ship with promptitude and dispatch, at the usual market rates.

The new plan was pronounced kapai (good), and gave universal satisfaction. Not only did it encourage a noble and national art, but the revenue of the kingdom was thereby largely increased. We can hardly realize, perhaps, the intense chagrin of these merry folk when they found that the missionaries discouraged their laudable efforts in this direction, not to mention that those teachers also interdicted the time-honoured custom of anthropophagy. I have often fancied I heard some ancient Maori sighing and lamenting for the good old times, the merry days when he was young!

But, possibly, it is as well that the moku and the head-curing process should be now among the number of lost and vanished arts.