136 Voyage of the Novara. 



noticeable amount of political agitation in various parts of 

 the interior, and we ourselves witnessed some chiefs, friendly 

 to the Government, who before starting for a great Maori 

 meeting near Drury offered to the Governor their good 

 services, and asked his orders. The Maori chiefs, whom 

 Colonel Browne received in his study, could only be dis- 

 tinguished from white men by the wonderfully copious 

 tattooing on their faces, and were in all other respects attired 

 exactly like Europeans. Some wore black round hats and 

 blouses, others wore caps. Only in the flaps of their ears 

 they carried small pieces of green nephrite, while suspended 

 round the neck by a thick chord was the inevitable club- 

 shaped meri-meri, that renowned stone weapon which de- 

 scends as an heir-loom in families, and is so highly prized 

 that a New Zealander will pay as high as £100 for one. 

 The chiefs candidly remarked that at this gathering the 

 selection of a Maori king would come up for decision, and 

 they therefore wished, as loyal and true subjects of the Queen 

 of England, which they said they always had been and 

 wished to continue, to know from the lips of her representa- 

 tive how they ought to act in such a case. Colonel Browne, 

 who like most of the British settlers in New Zealand seemed 

 to attach but little importance to the whole Maori movement, 

 or, if so, did not like to make it known, simply thanked the 

 chiefs for this renewed expression of their loyal sentiments, 

 adding in the spirit of Maori oratory that '^ he had already 



