THE DYING OUT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACES. 



245 



be strange indeed if they should cease with the 

 decline of either. It is not the emotional ele- 

 ments of religion which fail us. For these, with 

 the giowing goodness of mankind, are gaining in 

 purity and strength. Rather, it is the intellectu- 

 al elements of religion which arc conspicuously at 

 fault. We need to-day, not the faculty of wor- 



ship (that is ever fresh in the heart), but a clear- 

 er vision of the power we should worship. Nay, 

 it is not we who are borrowing the privileges of 

 theology : rather it is theology which seeks to 

 appropriate to itself the most universal privilege 

 of man. 



— Nineteenth Century. 



TOE DYING OUT 



OF THE POLYNESIAN 

 AND KANAKAS. 



By Sir DAVID WEDDEKBURN. 



RACES — MAORIS 



IN the quarter of the globe commonly known 

 . as Polynesia the various influences, natural 

 and artificial, which are everywhere at work, 

 tending to diminish the variety of existing or- 

 ganic types and to establish a general uniformity 

 in the aspect of Nature and of human society, 

 appear to operate at present with peculiar rapid- 

 ity. We fiud there the remains of a submerged 

 continent, planed down beneath the sea-level, 

 above which are visible only a few volcanic sum- 

 mits and a number of coral islets and reefs. The 

 vast Pacific Ocean covers nearly half the earth's 

 surface, and that portion of it called Polynesia, 

 over which the "Many Islands 'I are scattered, 

 may be styled one of the four quarters of the 

 globe, to which in area it is approximately equal. 

 Throughout this watery waste the only consid- 

 erable tract of land is the insular group of New 

 Zealand, exceeding somewhat In area the island 

 of Great Britain. The next largest group is the 

 Hawaiian, at the opposite extremity of Polynesia, 

 containing eight inhabited islands, whose aggre- 

 gate area is not much greater than that of York- 

 shire. The remaining groups of Polynesia proper 

 consist of islets so insignificant in size that the 

 total aggregate of land in this ocean expanse is 

 smaller than the United Kingdom of Great Brit- 

 ain and Ireland. All these fragments of a conti- 

 nent are inhabited by a kindred people ; they are 

 known generally as " Kanakas " (meaning simply 

 "men"); but in New Zealand the natives style 

 themselves the "Maori," or pure race, in contra- 

 distinction to the " Pakeha," or stranger. Apart 

 from the. general attractions of their character 

 and history, a special and tragic interest attaches 

 to these Polynesians in all their branches, for 

 their annihilation, as a distinct race, appears to 

 be inevitable within a very few years. Nowhere 



has the destructive effect even of a peaceable 

 European invasion been so marked as in Polyne- 

 sia ; nowhere have the robust invaders so rapidly 

 established themselves, to the extinction of fee- 

 bler, if not inferior, breeds. The unequal nature 

 of the struggle between the highly-organized 

 types familiar to us here and those which have 

 been developed under a less severe competition, 

 is most clearly exhibited ill New Zealand, whose 

 climate resembles that of Western Europe. The 

 fauna and flora of a small insulated land-surface 

 have in this case been brought into direct col- 

 lision with those of the great northern province, 

 evolved as the survivors of many competing 

 types. 



The ultimate result might have been antici- 

 pated, but the rapidity with which it has been 

 brought about is somewhat startling. In certain 

 districts, settled a good many years ago, the na- 

 tive plants and animals have, with a few excep- 

 tions, already disappeared, and are replaced by 

 those of Europe. In particular, the only con- 

 spicuous flowers and birds are those which make 

 gay our own fields and hedge-rows, while indige- 

 nous specimens must be sought for carefully if 

 they are to be found at all. Around Christchurch 

 ami Nelson the air rings with the song of sky- 

 larks and blackbirds, and is redolent of the 

 scent of hawthorn and sweetbrier. A few years 

 ago Dr. Haast, curator of the Canterbury Museum, 

 visited a remote district in the Middle Island, 

 where he found some three hundred different spe- 

 cies of indigenous plants, about one-third of them 

 being new to science. Quite recently he paid a 

 second visit to the same district, and could only 

 discover about ten per cent, of the species for- 

 merly seen ; the rest had vanished before the 

 face of European settlers. The only gallinaceous 



