174 Transactions. 



have met with. At the time that the horrors of the " ship-girl " 

 and the liquor traffic were being enacted at Kororareka, order 

 and decency reigned in the mission settlement at Paihia, on the 

 opposite side of the Bay of Islands. The industrial and educa- 

 tional system of the Church station at the Waimate compelled 

 the admiration of Charles Darwin, who visited the place during 

 the voyage of the " Beagle."* The young women brought up in 

 the missionaries' households were often sought as wives for 

 the chiefs, and the effects,of their training might be seen in after- 

 life by the habits of order and neatness they imported into the 

 kaingas. 



With the gradual development of colonial life the close con- 

 tact of the missionaries with the Maori came to an end, but its 

 spirit has survived to some extent in other agencies. To the 

 precept and example of the Maori clergy is no doubt mainly 

 due the wholesale stamping-out of the drinking habit throughout 

 the northern district, while the Te Aute College and St. Stephen's 

 School, and the Hukerere and Victoria Girls' Schools have helped 

 to give some of the youth of both sexes a hopeful start in life. 



But all these checks, and any other that might be mentioned, 

 have been but temporary and local. Taken altogether, their 

 effect on the general result has not been great. They have 

 failed to arrest the stream of tendency that is sweeping onward 

 with ever-increasing power and volume, ever meeting with less 

 and less resistance. 



The Maori has lost heart and abandoned hope. As it has 

 already been observed in the case of the individual, when once 

 the vital force has fallen below a certain point he dies from the 

 sheer want of an effort to live ; so it is with the race. It is 

 sick unto death, and is already potentially dead. As Von 

 Hochstetter remarks again, f " The Maoris themselves are 

 fully aware of this, and look forward with a fatal resignation 

 to the destiny of the final extinction of their race. They them- 

 selves say, ' As clover killed the fern, and the European dog 

 the Maori dog ; as the Maori rat was destroyed by the pakeha 

 rat, so our people also will be gradually supplanted and exter- 

 minated by the Europeans.' " 



The Census. 



According to a census taken last year| che Maori population 

 stood at 47,721. This includes 3,938 half-castes living as 

 Maoris. 



* " A Naturalist's Voyage in the ' Beagle,' " Chap, xviii. 

 ■\ Hochstetter's '• New Zealand," p. -I... 

 % New Zealand Official Year-book, 1<K)(>. 



