ATTENDING A NATIVE CHURCH.—A FEEJEEAN PREACHER.—DINNER WITH A FEEJEEAN FAMILY.—THE SEASONS IN FEEJEE.—A TROPICAL SHOWER.—A HURRICANE.—A PLANTER'S ADVENTURES.—SCENES OF DEVASTATION.—THE CLIMATE of THE FEEJEE ISLANDS.—WRECKED ON A REEF.—ESCAPING FROM THE JAWS OF CANNIBALS.—A WALKING ART GALLERY.—A TATTOOED WHITE MAN.—RETURNING TO SUVA.—THE FRIENDLY, OR TONGA, ISLANDS.—TONGATABOO.—THE KING OF THE TONGAS.—HOW HE LIVES.—A REMARKABLE CAVERN AND A LOVE STORY ABOUT IT.—FROM FEEJEE TO NEW ZEALAND.—HAURAKI GULF.—AUCKLAND.—A FINE SEAPORT AND ITS COMMERCE.—HOW NEW ZEALAND WAS COLONIZED.—THE MAORIS.—CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT A CURIOUS PEOPLE.—MISSIONARIES IN NEW ZEALAND.—HOW THE MAORIS MAKE WAR.

The second day of the stay of our friends at Levuka was Sunday, and the party attended the Episcopal church in the forenoon, where service was conducted by a clergyman who had recently arrived from London. In the afternoon they strolled to the native village outside the town, where they found some fifty or sixty Feejeeans squatted on the mat-covered floor of the neat and well-swept church listening to a preacher of their own race. They were amused to see a tall man armed with a long stick with which he occasionally touched the heads of those who were inattentive, and sometimes his touch was far from light. Frank thought the idea would not be a bad one for churches nearer home, where worshippers have been known to go to sleep during the sermon.

The preacher was a tall, fine-looking man of at least fifty years, and he spoke with an eloquence that indicated his earnestness and fervor. Of course his language was unknown to our friends, but they all agreed that the Feejeean tongue is capable of much expression. It contains many guttural sounds that do not always strike the American or English ear agreeably, and the orator seemed to speak with more rapidity than is compatible with a clear understanding on the part of his hearers. When the sermon was ended the preacher offered a prayer, and then a hymn was sung by the whole congregation. The air was a familiar Methodist one, but the words were Feejeean. Whether the meaning of the original hymn was preserved with the air no one of the listeners was able to say, and there was no interpreter present to tell them.

As soon as service was over the strangers were surrounded by a group of natives, and there was an attempt at conversation; but as our friends were totally unlearned in Feejeean, and the vocabulary of the natives was principally confined to the word "shillin'," there was not much interchange of thought. Nearly every Feejeean understands "shillin'" well enough to pronounce it. He has a clear idea that it means money, and it is in this sense that it is used. Ask a native what he will sell his house for, and he will answer "shillin';" ask him the price of a cocoanut, and the reply is the same. In the former case he would of course decline the offer if actually made, and in the latter he would bring you twenty or fifty cocoanuts for the figure named.

In strolling around as the congregation dispersed Frank and Fred became separated from the rest of the party, but without any misgivings as to their safety or loss of way, as they were accompanied by several natives, one of whom invited the youths to his house. This was an invitation not to be ignored; it was accepted at once, and the man led the way along a path to where he lived. It was a hut of dried reeds lashed to a framework of poles, and stood with a dozen similar huts in the shade of a grove of cocoa-trees. The thatched roof was high and arched, while the sides were very low, and had no windows. There were two doors on opposite sides, but the door-way was so low that it was necessary to stoop almost double in order to enter. In front of the hut was a lot of bones and all manner of refuse, and a couple of pigs were lying across the door-way. They showed no inclination to move as the master of the house approached; but on catching sight, and possibly smell, of the strangers, they were up and off very quickly.

Inside the hut the floor was covered with plaited rushes, and there was a low partition of reeds dividing it into two nearly equal spaces; one of these was used as kitchen and sitting-room and the other for sleeping; but there was no furniture in either place beyond three or four of the wooden pillows already described. In one corner of the kitchen was a rough hearth, with some clay pots in which fish and yams were cooked.

Partly by signs and partly by the words "want eat," the host invited the youths to stay to dinner. They accepted, more to see how and upon what the natives live rather than on account of having an appetite. Fire was lighted on the hearth, or rather it was stirred up from some slumbering coals, fish and yams were put on to boil, and in a little while the meal was ready. Frank and Fred made friends with the children, to whom they showed their watches, and made a few presents of silver coin as an indirect compensation for their dinner, and when the meal was ready they proceeded to enjoy it. One of the children had been sent for some banana-leaves, which served as plates; on these leaves the fish and yams were dished up, and a piece of rock-salt was brought out, together with a shell, with which each guest could scrape off as much salt as he liked, and whenever he wanted it. The youths made a practical demonstration of the truth of the adage that fingers were made before forks, though not without some inconvenience. To end the repast they had some ripe bananas, and of course the drink that accompanied the meal was the juice of freshly picked cocoanuts.

As soon as Frank and Fred rose from the mats the youngsters of the family attacked what they had left, and in a very few minutes nothing remained save the lump of salt and the empty banana-leaf plates. Then there was handshaking all around, and the visitors took their leave. The host accompanied them to the road leading back to town, and there left them, but not until he had pocketed a shilling which Frank tendered him.

Clouds were forming in the sky, and the youths thought it would be prudent to return to the hotel. They did so, and found the rest of the party on the veranda waiting for the promised shower. In a few minutes the rain came down thick and fast, and the wisdom of returning was no longer in doubt. The shower was soon over, however, and then the sun came out as brightly as ever, though there was no apparent change in the temperature.

"You are in the best season of the year," said one of their new acquaintances; "it's fortunate for you that it's not hurricane time now."

"We have here," he continued, "a dry season and a wet one. The former is cool, and lasts from May to October; the latter is hot, and lasts from October to May. During all the dry season, and for a month at each end of the wet one, the climate is delightful, the temperature varying from 70° to 78° or 79°, and the heat of the sun being tempered by breezes from the sea. The mean temperature is about 80°, the extreme ranges thus far recorded being 60° and 122°. From Christmas to March is called the 'hurricane season;' the air is moist and sticky, the temperature averaging 84°, with a humidity so great that one seems to be constantly in a Russian steam-bath. This is the unhealthy season, and fevers and other diseases due to the heat and moisture are common."

Frank asked if hurricanes were frequent during the season.

"Not at all," was the reply, "but when they do come they are in dead earnest. From 1879 to 1886 we didn't have a really severe hurricane; but this is, I believe, the longest interval known to any of the European residents. One old settler told me there were several years when not a season passed without at least one hurricane."

"Are they very destructive?" Fred inquired.

"I can best answer that question," said the gentleman, "by describing the first hurricane I ever passed through in the Feejees.

"I was on a plantation in which I had bought an interest, and during the whole of the month of March the weather was very calm and sultry. One day, towards the beginning of April, the wind turned to the north-west, which was quite unusual; squalls and showers followed, and then the breeze freshened into a gale. Heavy clouds covered the sky, thunder sounded loud and long, the barometer fell, and the clouds seemed to sweep just above the tops of the trees. Then the rain came in torrents, flooding all the level ground, and turning the brooks into rivers. Our party took shelter in the largest and strongest house in the neighborhood—one that had stood through several hurricanes, and was thought to be proof against them.

"For two days the wind blew, and every hour it increased. By the second night it was a fully developed hurricane whose velocity we had no means of measuring. The rain fell tremendously; the lightning was vivid, and almost continuous. The thunder followed the course of the storm; and altogether the noise was so great that we had to shout to one another to be understood. Our house shook like a rickety bird-cage, and many times it seemed to be half lifted from the ground; but it stood through the storm, and was the only one that did so.

"On the following morning the wind had died down to a moderate gale, and we could venture out. The picture that presented itself cannot possibly be described with anything like vividness. Cocoanut and bread-fruit trees by the thousand had been thrown down or stripped of their leaves; banana-plants were in the same condition; the grass was levelled, and covered with mud and water, and not a house in the neighborhood remained standing. In the cotton-fields not only were the leaves and bolls stripped from the plants, but in many places the plants had been torn up by the roots and lay in heaps. In Levuka many houses were blown down; vessels were driven ashore, or broken to pieces at their moorings; and the whole windward coast of the islands was strewn with wrecks. Many foreign vessels that were known to be in Feejee waters, or near the islands, were never heard of again, and they doubtless went down on that terrible night. At Macuata, on Vanua Levu, the wind lifted a small vessel bodily from the beach and blew it into a native village two or three hundred yards away!"

The story of the hurricane led to various anecdotes of the South Seas, and in this way the afternoon was passed until dinner-time. One man told how a ship on which he once sailed was driven before a hurricane and thrown upon a reef, where the waves dashed her to pieces. He was carried into the comparatively smooth lagoon inside the reef, and saved himself by swimming, all his companions being drowned. Fortunately for him, the islanders among whom he landed were not cannibals, or he would have been condemned at once to the oven. The cannibals of the South Pacific have always regarded people shipwrecked on their shores as special gifts or windfalls, just as the inhabitants of certain parts of the coast of the United States are said to have regarded the cargoes of wrecked ships less than a century ago. Of course he taught the natives many useful things, and eventually married the daughter of the chief, and became a chief himself when his father-in-law died.

Another man, who claimed to have visited half the islands of the Pacific, endeavored to prove his assertion by asking our friends to step inside for a few moments, where he removed his clothing and exhibited samples of the tattooing of pretty nearly every group. "That clouded pattern on my left leg," said he, "was done in the Kingsmill group, while those squares and fancy stripes on the right leg were put on in Samoa. My right arm and shoulder were done in the New Hebrides, while the left side was the work of the best artist of the Marquesas Islands. The fancy embroidery on my breast is of New Zealand, and that down my back was done in Tahiti."

Truly this man was a walking art-gallery of the Pacific Islanders, only his hands and face remaining unmarked by the tattoo. When the inspection was completed, and our friends had left the man to resume his dress, Frank suggested that he would be a fine prize for a medical museum, where his skin could be preserved after his death. Doctor Bronson agreed with him, but the suggestion was not offered to the subject of the conversation.

The party returned to Suva by the steamer that brought them to Levuka, and there a change of plans occurred. Doctor Bronson, with Frank and Fred, proceeded to New Zealand by the regular mail-steamer, while Colonel Bush, with the Pera, continued his cruise among the islands of the Pacific. Our friends were sorry to part with their pleasant companions and the splendid hospitality of the yacht, but they did not feel justified in protracting their stay among the islands, since there is a general similarity of the groups to each other, though they may differ greatly in detail.

Frank and Fred regretted that they could not visit the Friendly, or Tonga, Islands, the first destination of the Pera, but they consoled themselves by reading what they could find on the subject. They learned that the Tonga group was discovered by Tasman and visited by Cook, who gave the isles the name of Friendly, on account of the apparently amiable disposition of the inhabitants. They have a population of about twenty-five thousand, and are farther advanced in civilization than their neighbors of Feejee or Samoa. The Wesleyan missionaries have converted them to Christianity; many of them can speak English, and have learned reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, and on the whole stand high in the scale of education. The products of the Tonga Islands are similar to those of the Feejees, and the group is also subject to hurricanes, which are often very destructive.

The principal island is Tongataboo, which is low and level, of coral formation, and about twenty miles long by twelve broad. Here the King resides, and here, too, is the principal mission station, the King being an earnest Christian, and a regularly ordained preacher in the pulpit. He wears European clothes, has European furniture in his house, employs an Englishman as his private secretary, and altogether is quite a civilized gentleman. He has caused good roads to be made around and across the island, and in other ways has made his little kingdom know the advantages of the lands beyond the seas.

Fred was particularly interested in reading about a curious monument of former days that is to be seen in Tonga, and of which the natives have no tradition. It reminded him of the monuments of Easter Island, and he made the following note on the subject:

"It stands on a grassy lawn in the interior of the island, and is so surrounded by tropical growths that it is concealed from view until the visitor is close upon it. It consists of three huge stones, two of them upright like pillars, and the third resting upon them. This upper stone is eighteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and fifteen feet above the ground; resting upon it is, or was, an immense bowl of hewn stone, which is supposed to have been connected with some of the religious ceremonies of the people who erected this monument. But how they put the three stones in their places is an unfathomable mystery."

Fred also wanted to see a famous cavern in one of the Tonga Islands which can only be reached by diving into the sea, as the mouth is completely under water at all times. A young Tongan found it while diving after a turtle, and he afterwards utilized it as the place of concealment of the girl with whom he had fallen in love, and who was the daughter of a chief whose displeasure he had incurred. He persuaded her to flee with him and follow him into the water; these women swim like dolphins, and she dived after him and rose into the cave, which is beautifully lighted by the phosphorescent rays from the water, very much as is the famous Blue Grotto near Naples.

Here she remained for months, everybody wondering what had become of her, and also wondering why the young man absented himself so frequently, and always returned with wet hair. He carried her fruit and fish to eat and a supply of mats for carpeting the stone floor at one side of the cavern. One day his companions followed him, and dived where they had seen him disappear. Thus they found the cave; but what became of its inmates is not clearly recorded in the history of Tonga.

It takes an excellent swimmer to make the visit to the cave without danger of death from drowning. The entrance bristles with sharp points of rock, and when a native dives he turns on his back and uses his hands to keep himself clear of these dangerous obstructions. The captain of an English man-of-war tried to enter the cavern, but was so severely injured against the sharp rocks that he died in consequence.

We will leave the Pera to pursue her course among the islands of the Pacific, while we accompany Doctor Bronson and the youths on their voyage to New Zealand and Australia. The mail-steamer Zealandia carried them swiftly along, and on the morning of the fifth day they were in sight of the shores which were their destination. From Suva to Auckland, the former capital of New Zealand, is a distance of about one thousand miles, and there is regular communication both ways monthly between the two points. There is also steam communication between Sydney and Feejee, about sixteen hundred miles—sometimes direct from one port to the other, and sometimes by way of New Caledonia, which lies a short distance out of the direct track.

The Zealandia entered Hauraki Gulf, passing between the Great Barrier and Little Barrier islands, and holding her course almost due south; then, through the Rangitoto Channel, she turned, and the harbor of Auckland was before her.

"Shall we have to wait for the tide?" Frank asked, as they passed Great Barrier Island. "It often happens that we have to wait several hours for a tide when we're all impatience to get on shore."

"We don't have to wait for tides at Auckland," replied an officer of the Zealandia, to whom the query was addressed. "We can come in at dead low-water and steam to an anchorage, or to the dock if we're ready to go there. The least depth is thirty-six feet at dead low-water of the spring-tide, and at the highest tides we have fifty feet.

"There is hardly a finer seaport anywhere," he added, "than Waitamata, as the harbor of Auckland is frequently called by the New Zealanders. It has, as I've told you, plenty of water at all times, and its entrances are superb. Rangitoto Channel is the one generally used; the other is Hieh Channel, and would be considered first-rate in many a place I know of. Rangitoto is about two miles wide; the section of the harbor between North Head and Kauri Point is about a mile across, and therefore is easily fortified in case we have to defend it against a hostile fleet."

"I see," said Fred, who had been studying the map, "that the island is very narrow here."

"Yes," was the reply; "it is only six miles across; and if you examine carefully you'll see a good harbor on the other side. That is the harbor of Manakau, and there's a railway connecting it with Waitamata."

"It reminds me of Corinth, in Greece," said Fred, as he continued the contemplation of the map.

"No doubt it does," said the officer, in response. "Auckland is called the Corinth of the South Pacific; Corinth is now having a canal made through its isthmus, and we hope to have one for ours in due time."

The steamer made her way direct to the wharf, and as soon as she had made fast and the gang-plank was out, our friends stepped on shore in New Zealand. Under the guidance of a fellow-passenger, they entered a carriage and were driven up Queen Street, the principal thoroughfare, to the hotel they had selected for a resting-place during their sojourn in Auckland. They were favorably impressed with the activity that prevailed on the streets, and the general evidences of business prosperity. "A Missourian would call it 'a right smart place,'" said Frank, as they were alighting from the carriage at the end of their drive.

"Yes," responded Fred, "and even a New Yorker would treat its beautiful bay with respect after seeing it as we did."

"Where did the city get its name?" one of the youths asked Doctor Bronson.

"It was named after Lord Auckland, First Lord of the Admiralty, and afterwards Governor-general of India, by Captain Hobson, who founded the city. Captain Hobson was sent here, in 1838, to organize a colony. He saw this was a good site for a city, and accordingly he established the capital here. It remained the capital until 1865, when a royal commission moved the seat of government to Wellington, the latter place being more centrally located. Of course the Aucklanders were not at all pleased at the change, but their city is so well established commercially that there is no danger of their being ruined by it."

From various sources Frank and Fred found that Auckland had a population of nearly forty thousand within the municipality, and seventy thousand in the city and suburbs. "It has," said Frank, in his journal, "handsome streets, a great number of well-constructed public buildings, such as post-office, custom-house, exchange, courts, Government offices, and the other paraphernalia of a well-established city, and it has also a fine museum, a public library, and a park and botanical garden. No city would be complete without a cemetery, and Auckland is not behind in this respect, as it has a very pretty one, and, as the French say, it is well peopled.

"We were much interested in the Queen Street wharf, where we landed; it extends nearly two thousand feet into the harbor, and affords facilities for thirty or forty vessels to discharge or receive cargoes at once. There are several other wharves, including a fine one, nearly completed, at the end of Hobson Street. I have heard often of 'Hobson's Choice,' and never knew exactly what it was. This city seems to have been Hobson's choice, since Captain Hobson founded it; all I can say is, that I shall have more respect for the old saw than I ever had before.

"You can get an idea of the commerce of the place when you know that about two hundred and fifty sailing-vessels are owned here of an aggregate burden of twenty thousand tons, and sixty-five steamers of seven thousand tons altogether. It has regular steam communication with Australian ports by the vessels of the Union Steamship Company, has a monthly line to Feejee, and is a port of call for the mail-steamers between Australia and California. The Northern Steamship Company of Auckland has a fleet of thirteen steamers, principally engaged in coast navigation, so that New Zealand is well served by its own boats.

"Of course the port has graving or dry docks for the accommodation of the ships that need them. There was one three hundred feet long, and forty-two feet wide, but it was found inadequate after a few years, and now they are completing another five hundred feet long and ninety feet wide. This ought to be long and wide enough; but if ships go on increasing in size as they have been, it won't be a great while before another and longer dock will be needed at Auckland as well as in other ports."

While Frank was noting the foregoing points in regard to Auckland, Fred was writing a few paragraphs relative to New Zealand. And first he wondered how it came to be New Zealand instead of New England or New Britain.

"That's easily explained," said Doctor Bronson, "by the fact that it was discovered by the Dutch navigator, Tasman; the French and Spaniards both lay claim to a previous discovery, but the evidence they offer is very doubtful. Tasman was sent in 1642 by Van Dieman, Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, to explore the coast of New Holland. He made the exploration and called the country Van Dieman's Land, in honor of the Governor-general, but the name has recently been changed to Tasmania. On this voyage he discovered this country, which he called New Zealand, in honor of the province of his birth; he also discovered the archipelagos of the Feejee and Friendly isles, and returned to Batavia, having been absent only ten months.

"Look at the map," continued the Doctor, "and you will see that New Zealand is divided nearly in the centre by a channel of the sea known as Cook Strait. The two islands thus formed are known as North Island and South Island, the former containing forty-eight thousand square miles, and the latter fifty-seven thousand. Beyond South Island is Stewart Island, which is triangular, and measures about thirty-six miles on a side; taken together the three islands remind you of Italy, and are shaped not unlike a boot with its toe towards the north. South Island is sometimes called Middle Island, from its position between North and Stewart islands.

"Cook Strait commemorates the great navigator who was killed on the Sandwich Islands. He landed here in 1769, and took possession of the country in the name of England. He made five visits altogether to New Zealand, and introduced pigs, potatoes, sheep, goats, and other animals and vegetables."

"Hadn't Tasman already taken the country for Holland?" said Frank.

"No," replied the Doctor, "he did not set foot at all in New Zealand. He anchored in a bay in South Island, next to that in which the town of Nelson now stands, and had an encounter with the natives who opposed his going on shore. He lost four men in the fight, named the place Massacre Bay, in memory of the occurrence, and sailed away without landing."

"How soon after Captain Cook's occupation of the country did the British Government establish colonies?"

"Not for some time," replied Doctor Bronson. "In the latter part of the last century and the beginning of this many American and English whalers visited New Zealand, and year by year the knowledge of the country was increased. Visitors usually got along well enough with the natives, and were kindly treated; whenever there were encounters with the New Zealanders they were generally caused by the misconduct of the visitors themselves. Thus, in 1809, the captain of the English ship Boyd flogged and otherwise ill-treated a native chief, and the followers of the latter took a terrible revenge by killing no less than seventy of the crew and passengers.

"On some parts of the coast the natives were for a long time hostile, probably in consequence of outrages that had been committed by whalemen and others. Some of their ideas of the white men were curious. The natives paddle their boats with their faces towards the bow, and when they saw the foreign boats coming to the shore they thought the men had eyes in the backs of their heads because they rowed with their backs in the direction of their course. Some of them thought the ships were great birds, and their boats the birdlets or chicks.

"As in Polynesia, the missionaries were the pioneers of civilization in New Zealand. They came here in 1814, and previous to that time only one European, a shipwrecked sailor, is known to have lived among the natives. The Church Missionary Society established a mission in that year at the Bay of Islands, now called Russell—the mission party consisting of Rev. Samuel Marsden, chaplain to the Government of New South Wales, and three other ministers, Kendall, Hall, and King. They were kindly received by the chiefs, and held their first service on Christmas-day, 1814. Eight years later the Wesleyans established missions in New Zealand, and sixteen years after that (in 1838), the Roman Catholics did likewise."

"Then the missionaries were in advance of all Government colonization?" said Fred.

"The Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyans certainly were," was the reply, "as the Government did not send a resident official here till 1833. He had no power beyond that of writing reports of what he saw and heard, and was felicitously styled by somebody 'a man-of-war without guns.' There had been an attempt to form a colony in 1825, but it was given up, and the sixty emigrants who came out from England returned in the ship that brought them. The mission establishment at Kororareka, in the Bay of Islands, became the nucleus around which a good many lawless adventurers gathered. The bay was the resort of whale-ships, and in 1838 it was visited by fifty-six American, twenty-three English, twenty-one French, one German, and twenty-four New South Wales ships. There was so much lawlessness and crime that a vigilance committee was formed, very much like the institutions of that name which have been famous in California history.

"In 1837," continued the Doctor, glancing occasionally at a book he held in his hand,[6] "an association was formed for the purpose of colonizing the country, very much as India had been colonized by the East India Company. It was styled the New Zealand Company, and was founded by Lord Durham, and after some delay a surveying ship was sent out, followed by several ships carrying emigrants. This was the beginning of the colonization of New Zealand; the first settlement was made at what is now Wellington, the capital, though it was then named Port Nicholson. Auckland was founded soon after; and with the foundation of that city and the establishment of a government, the colony was well under way. It prospered for a while, and then, owing to quarrels with the natives, there was a long period of gloom.

"We will talk more on this subject by-and-by," said the Doctor; "just at present we will use our eyes in studying the present rather than the past."

With this hint the youths closed their note-books and returned them carefully to the pockets where they belonged.

The youths were curious to see a Maori (pronounced mow-ry, the first syllable rhyming with "cow"), and they had not left the steps of the hotel before their desire was gratified. Their fellow-passenger from the Zealandia pointed out several of the aborigines of New Zealand, and among them he recognized an acquaintance, who greeted him cordially.

Frank was disappointed at seeing the man dressed in European garb, and looking altogether so much like an Englishman that he was not readily distinguished from the men of British origin. He was fully six feet high, muscular and well-formed, and had a slight tendency to corpulence. His face was darker than that of the average Englishman, and about the complexion of a native of the middle or south of France, and certainly lighter than the southern Italian. Frank thought it could be described as a light brown; but he was informed that these people are of different hues, and the Maoris have twelve names to indicate as many shades of color.

The eyes of this specimen native were black, and his hair was also black and slightly curly. As he talked he displayed a fine set of teeth; and as dentists are unknown among the Maoris, it is to be supposed these teeth were natural. His features were regular and symmetrical, the nose having a slight tendency to an aquiline form, the lips large and well developed, but not thick like those of the negro, and the mouth capacious enough for all practical purposes.

After a short conversation with his friend the Maori passed on, and then Frank learned that he belonged to one of the families of chiefs, and could therefore be considered as belonging to the aristocratic branch of the race.

"There are about forty thousand, or perhaps forty-five thousand, Maoris in New Zealand at present," said the gentleman. "Two or three thousand of them live on South Island, and all the rest upon North Island. The families of the chiefs are readily distinguished by their superior grace and dignity, just as the aristocratic part of a race is distinguished in any other part of the world. When Captain Cook came here the Maoris were savages and cannibals, though they had a patriarchal form of government, and in several ways had made an approach to civilization."

"They practised tattooing, did they not?" one of the youths asked.

"Certainly," was the reply; "and some of them still do so, though the habit is dying out. In another generation it will hardly be heard of any more. The Maoris are becoming assimilated to the European population around them. Many of them own houses and farms, have large herds and flocks, and there are several Maori merchants and ship-owners. Many of them are employed by the English settlers and merchants, and you will find them on the railways and in the coasting steamers, where they make good sailors and are generally liked by their employers."

Frank asked whence they were supposed to have come, and how long it probably was since they settled in New Zealand.

"They are of Malay origin," said the gentleman, "and according to their traditions, which are unusually clear, they came here from either the Sandwich or the Samoan islands, four or five centuries ago, in a fleet of thirteen large canoes, which were followed by others. The names of their canoes, the chiefs that commanded them, and the places where they landed are carefully preserved in their traditions. They say that they came from an island called Hawaiki, in the Pacific Ocean, and this is thought to be either Savaii, in the Samoan group, or Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands. Their language is so nearly like that of the Sandwich Islanders that the two people can understand each other after a little practice.

"They had no written language until one was made for them by the missionaries, and the nearest approach to it was a knotted stick, by which the wise men transmitted the names of successive chiefs. They had a great many songs of love, war, religion, and other things,[Pg 195]
[Pg 196] but these are fast dying out, and so are their traditions and legends. Sir George Grey collected many of their poems, myths, and fables, and published them in a large octavo volume, and if you wish to know more on this subject you can see the book in our public library."

Fred asked if they were diminishing in numbers as rapidly as the people of the South Sea Islands had diminished since the advent of the white strangers.

"Yes," was the reply, "but civilization has had less to do with their reduction than the quarrels among themselves. When Captain Cook took possession of the islands, it is thought there were 120,000 Maoris living here; to-day there are less than 50,000. Before the whites came here the Maoris were divided into eighteen nations or great tribes, and the nations were subdivided into tribes, of which each had its chief whom it acknowledged. Each tribal chief regarded the head of his nation as his lord and obeyed his orders.

"The nations were constantly at war with each other, and then, too, the tribes of any one nation might be at war among themselves. The Maoris loved war for its own sake, vastly preferring it to peace, however much it might inconvenience them. Some of their ways were peculiar, and quite at variance with European notions or customs. Shall I tell you some of them?"

The youths expressed their desire to hear more about this interesting people, and their informant continued:

"Their wars were conducted with great ferocity, and the vanquished were either enslaved by the victors or killed and eaten."

"That is not so very strange," said Fred, as the gentleman paused; "savages in many parts of the world do the same thing."

"Of course they do," was the reply; "but they do not divide their ammunition and supplies with their enemies in order that they can fight on equal terms."

"Did the Maoris do that?" Fred asked in astonishment.

"Certainly they did, on several occasions that are known to the white residents. While they were at war with the English they used to send notice whenever they were about to make an attack, and they thought we did not treat them fairly in not doing the same. After the last war one of our officers asked a Maori chief why it was that when he had command of a certain road he did not attack the ammunition and provision trains. 'Why, you fool!' answered the Maori, much astonished, 'if we had stolen your powder and food, how could you have fought?'

"Once when one chief insulted another, the latter remarked that if chief number one had not known his own superiority in arms and ammunition, he would not have dared to behave in such a manner. Thereupon chief number one divided his fighting material into two equal parts, and sent one part to his enemy with an invitation to war.

"Sometimes two villages would get up a little war, and after fighting each other all day, the inhabitants would come out of their forts towards evening and talk over the day's sport in the most friendly way. The next morning they would begin again, and keep it up during the daytime, to meet in the evening for a social conference. An old missionary used to tell how, in one of these local wars, he had known the defenders of a fort to send out to their assailants that they were short of provisions, and the latter would immediately send in a supply of food. The same missionary said he had performed divine service one Sunday between two hostile forts, the inhabitants of which came out to worship, meet in the most perfect amity, and return, to resume fighting on Monday morning.

"It is estimated," said the gentleman, "that between the years 1820 and 1840 more than thirty thousand Maoris perished in these inter-tribal wars. Many perished in the wars with the English, and many others have died in consequence of their contact with civilization, as in the islands of the Pacific, some from intemperance, and others from small-pox, measles, and kindred diseases, which were brought here by the whites. At present wars among them have ceased, cannibalism is unknown, fully one-half of the adults can read and write, and two-thirds of them belong to the churches."

---