454 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



party. And all this reputation was built up on their practical, 

 scientific knowledge. Their knowledge of the mechanical 

 powers gave them the strength of a giant, with the rapidity of 

 a divinity. Their knowledge of the properties of water enabled 

 them to grind their corn, to conduct the water where they 

 pleased, and even to make it rise from the earth at their own 

 doors. The blacksmith was the metallurgist, and the mis- 

 sionary was the chemist and the doctor. 



If some intelligent Maori had asked them, "How is it you 

 are able to perform all these wonderful things?" some of them 

 would no doubt reply, " We have learned how to do many of 

 these things in England, and from books we can learn how to do 

 anything else that we may wish." This, then, was the clue to 

 knowledge and power ; and need any one be surprised that the 

 chiefs were anxious for schools to be established that they and 

 their children might learn how to do all those wonderful works? 

 Poor simple-minded savages ! They were soon to find out that 

 schools were not established to teach anything more useful 

 than what was required to become a clerk or a shopman. 

 They were not to encourage self-reliance and self-help, but to 

 inculcate the necessity of the individual being always guided 

 by authority. 



Even this instruction, poor as it was, only applied to the 

 middle-class schools at that time in England, for in the 

 primary schools reading, writing, and arithmetic were of little 

 importance compared with the catechism and the geography of 

 Palestine. As for the college education, the highest honours 

 were conferred on those who showed most knowledge of the 

 languages of two nations that were barbarians in comparison 

 with the English. The Maori might be surprised to hear that 

 in this much-bepraised classical learning there was very little 

 of it true, and none at all useful ; and tliat a more helpless 

 person, so far as education is concerned, can scarcely be im- 

 agined for the colony than a man who had graduated with the 

 highest honours at a university. The Maori, however, got his 

 heart's desire. Schools were established and examinations 

 held, but what effect they had on Hongi and his braves is not 

 very clear ; but the benefit of the lessons in practical science 

 is praised by no less a person than the renowned Darwin. He 

 writes, " Moreover, native w^orkmanship, taught by mission- 

 aries, has effected this change : the lesson of the missionary 

 is the enchanter's wand. The house had been built, the 

 windows framed, the fields ploughed, and even the trees 

 grafted by the New-Zealander. At the mill a New-Zealander 

 was seen powdered white with flour, like his miller brother in 

 England. When T looked at this whole scene I thought it 

 admirable. It was not merely that England was brought 

 vividly before my mind, yet, as the evening drew to a close, the 



