108 ORES, EARTHS, AND MINERALS. the enterprise would enjoy two great special advantages: the one, that as the sand* lies on, or rather is, the beach, none of those costly digging or mining operations commonly attendant on the raising of ores to the surface, would be needed; the other, that within a few miles of the ore there are millions of tons of forest-timber which in the process of clearing lands for agriculture would afford an unlimited supply of cheap charcoal, the fuel with which the finest brands of steel have ever been produced. I may remark here, too, that since this sheet first went to press gold has been discovered both on the west coast of the South Island, and Wear, and Invercargill. As to other ores, earths, and minerals, I may observe that pure sulphur is abundant, lead and manganese exist near Auckland, alum and nitre have been discovered at Wanganui and near the medicinal springs of the Roturua lakes, whilst it is not, I think, improbable that that valuable article of commerce, boracic acid, may eventually be found about some of the inland Solfatara or mineral pools of Taupo. Various useful earths, too-fire-clay, pipe-clay, and ochre-are common; slate, marble, granite, sandstone, and freestone are found in various parts; and limestone, though not so generally spread as would be desirable for agricultural and building purposes, exists in many localities in great quantity and of singular purity and strength. *The following is a more recent analysis of the sand made by a high scientific authority: "The metallic iron contained in the sand is 65 77 per cent., a very large per centage indeed." ORIGIN. Strong personal resemblance, certain affinities in language and customs, and some traditional history, may satisfy us that the ancestors of the "Maori were of Malay origin, and originally emigrated to New Zealand from Hawaii, one of the Sandwich Islands, a group of the North Pacific, distant about 4,000 miles; and it has been conjectured that this emigration took place some 400 or 500 years ago. It is thought that over-population led to a considerable early migration from Hawaii; and that under various leaders, numerous canoe parties, from time to time, put off from the parent island. Some of the emigrant-adventurers settled in the nearer islands of the Southern Polynesia; others, bolder navigators with better provisioned canoes, pursued their way from island to island through the summer seas of the South Pacific in search of a larger kingdom until at last, by accident or design, they reached New Zealand. It is not improbable that some native indigenous race existed in New Zealand when the Hawiian emigrants arrived. But if so, these ancient New Zealanders were either eaten by the new comers, or were amalgamated with them, or were in some way blotted out as a distinct race, quite as effectually as the ancient Britons were by their Roman and Saxon conquerors. The present New Zealanders are a mixed race. Either their emigrant ancestors did not arrive a pure race from Hawaii; or, after arrival, they amalgamated with some indigenous race; or they afterwards intermixed with later emigrant adventurers, *The word "Maori," which they apply to themselves as their peculiar name, signifies anything that is native or indigenous, and has the same meaning as the word "Moor," applied to the Moorish race.- Taylor. arriving from Tahiti, Waiho, or other over-peopled islands of the South Pacific. The majority, allowing for differences of food and climate acting on a dozen generations, resemble the good-looking Sandwich Islanders, the parent stock; but some, much darker, have woolly hair; others have a look of the Tartar with a dash of negro blood; whilst a few are startlingly like Jews. EARLY CUSTOMS.-Cannibalism was common among them up to thirty years ago; but the custom is now extinct. Tattooing, Tapu,* Slavery and Polygamy were also all common customs among them a few years since, and these customs are not yet extinct. They possessed a mythology rudely resembling the classic heathen. Gods and goddesses, benign and malignant deities, ruled over elemental kingdoms; whilst gods and demigods, Jove-like, seduced the fairest daughters of men and peopled the elements with Heroes. They offered no human sacrifices; but possessed a savage priesthood who propitiated the Deities with rites and ceremonies; and who were the prophet oracles of the people, both in war and peace. They seem to have had no very distinct ideas as to existence in a future state, but to have believed that the spirits of the departed went to a sort of Hades, where the most wicked were finally annihilated. Firm believers in sorcery, witchcraft and incantations, they held that not only wicked deities and priests, but that every person could bewitch; and that sickness was the effect of witchcraft. Infanticide of female children was common, but age was respected, and adultery was death; though then, as now, girlhood chastity was little valued, and virgin brides were rare. Split into numerous tribes and sub-tribes, ruled with patriarchal despotism by hereditary chiefs, they seem ever to have lived with each other in a state of chronic hostility-periodically bursting out into the acute form of internecine massacre. Tribe-feuds and bloody wars did not, however, arise among the New Zealanders as they arose among the Australian aborigines and the American red men. The Maori had no wild larder of *The ceremony of making some person or thing sacred and untouchable; or some spot, path, or river, impassable, for a time. NUMBERS AND DECREASE. 111 opossum and kangaroo to defend against hungry marauders; no Sioux or Black Fect rover trapped his beaver, or harried his deer. The Maori was a stationary, man-eating, fisher-farmernot a hunter living by the chase, and forced to fight to obtain, or to preserve, his daily food. The Maori fought because blood for blood was the one law which he ever obeyed; because revenge was the precious heir-loom bequeathed by ferocious father to ferocious son; because victorious war gave him wives and slaves; and because, like the Irishman, he loved fighting for fighting's sake. In the year 1600, some Waikato native might slay a Ngapuhi; Ngapuhi would know no rest till a dozen Waikato had been cut off in return; a counter retaliation would ensue; some of the victims would be distantly related to other tribes; these would take the war-path; idle tribes would rush in to join the fray as amateurs; the bloody circle would go on widening and widening; until at last, in three generations, the one murder would be forgotten in the thousand, and none of the belligerents would know, or care to know, the original cause of quarrel. Thus the Temple of Janus was scarcely ever closed in New Zealand. Two neighbour tribes might patch up a month's truce and club tomahawks for the slaughter of a third tribe-but the pastime over, slaves divided, convivial ferocity duly displayed in the cannibal feast and the war-dance, they would straight revive their old feud; or step on the trailed coat to begin a new one; and would fight with such exterminating fury as, sadly enough, to remind one of nothing so much as of the old story of the "Kilkenny cats." NUMBERS AND DECREASE.-It is strange that a missionary author so well informed as the Rev. Mr. Taylor should appear blind to the fact that the New Zealanders were once a far more numerous people. It may be that their former numbers were overrated, and from the cause which Mr. Taylor assigns. But after making ample allowance for this there would still remain anew deserted gardens, villages, strongholds, and fortifications, to prove the former existence of a much larger population. Such exterminating internecine wars as the New Zealanders long waged with each other, coupled with their short-sighted 112 CAUSES OF DECREASE. policy of destroying female infants as incumbrances in war, must in a few generations have thinned the ranks of even a populous people. Old whalers point to bays and creeks once alive with native settlements where, now, no canoe is to be seen; and patriarchal Maories show the localities of Tribes whose very names are becoming extinct. Indeed, nothing is more freely admitted among the natives themselves than this fact of decrease of numbers; and without troubling ourselves with speculations as to what was the maximum of population ever attained by the Maori race, or as to what (and when) was its greatest ratio of decrease, we may safely conclude that if it be about 50,000 now it was full double this number a hundred years ago. CAUSES OF DECREASE.-Such decrease has been attributed to the following causes:-1st, to some ethnological law of nature that the black man shall disappear before the white man; 2nd, to a change of dress and diet; 3rd, to European-introduced diseases and to intemperance; 4th, to a blighting sense of inferiority and degradation in the presence of the white man. Now it is not a law of nature that the black man shall die out where the white man comes. The two live and flourish together in Asia, Africa and India. Where the Settler comes, rum in one hand, rifle in the other, to seize the hunting-grounds of a chase-subsisting people, as in America and Van Diemen's Land, there, he will drive back, reduce, or even extirpate either red or black man. But this fact no more proves the existence of any ethnological law of nature that Whites must consume Blacks than the fact of one man's getting drunk on gin proves the existence of any teetotal law of nature that no man shall taste port. No life-supporting hunting grounds have been wrested from the Maori. He cultivated garden-spots out of millions of fertile acres when the white man came-he did so ever afterhe does so now. The change of diet and dress has been an improvement in diet and dress. Physiologists hold that a variety of food is best for man formerly, the Maori had but fish and potatoes; now, in addition, he has bread and meat. Considering, too, the sudden artificial changes of temperature to which he exposes himself, the new blanket is probably a more life-preserving |