156 Transactions. 



under cultivation, practically all the open fertile country of the 

 North Island shows unmistakable signs of agricultural opera- 

 tions. The clay hill-sides of the north are covered with surface 

 drains, the volcanic plains of Taranaki are perforated with 

 the ruas or storage-pits, all over the Waikato delta the pumice 

 land has been excavated for sand to spread over the kumara 

 plantations : every narrow river -valley, every little shingle patch 

 along the coast, and every sheltered nook under the sea-cliffs 

 has been utilised ; even on the rocky scoria flats the loose stones 

 have been laboriously gathered into heaps to clear the ground 

 for the early crops. 



It is not, of course, to be supposed that anything like the 

 total number of the pas or the entire area of cultivated land 

 were occupied at any one time. Tribes would be driven off. 

 and whole tracts of land would be deserted, perhaps, for a long 

 period ; and, even where the inhabitants were unmolested, the 

 land would be temporarily worn out and new pieces brought 

 under cultivation. Many of the pas, moreover, were built only 

 to serve some temporary purpose, while many more would be 

 deserted for a new site to suit the varying fortunes of the occu- 

 pants. If the fighting strength of a pa was much reduced, a 

 large fortification would be untenable, and a new one of more 

 modest dimensions would be constructed on another spot ; while . 

 if the numbers greatly increased, a more roomy situation would 

 have to be found. Still, taking all this into consideration — and 

 even allowing that many of the pas may have been of pre- 

 Hawaikian origin — the traces of occupation are so extensive that 

 it is safe to estimate the population before the decav com- 

 menced, not at one, but at many hundreds of thousands. 



Commencement of Decay. 



Some writers, in attempting to account for the rapid dis- 

 appearance of the Maori, have put forward a theory that the 

 race was already in an advanced stage of decay by the time of 

 Captain Cook's discovery. It is, of course, possible that a period 

 of internecine strife of more than common intensity may have 

 occurred which for the moment would have reduced the popula- 

 tion ; but the Maoris were a healthy, vigorous, and prolific 

 race, and a season of comparative political rest would have boob 

 brought them up to their normal numbers. They had not yet 

 entered on that condition of decadence whose lines are gradually 

 though surely converging to a vanishing-point. However humi- 

 liating to the self-esteem of the white man, it must be confessed 

 that it is the contact with European civilisation that has proved 

 the ruin of the race. From the moment that the pakeha found 

 & footing in the country, by an inevitable chain of causa- 



