CHAPTER XIV 



OUR Maori population, who are supposed to be 

 of Polynesian extraction as their dialect 

 indicates seem to have been established here for 

 about five hundred years, and are a most interest- 

 ing people. Hospitable and generous to a degree, 

 honest and upright, so were they described by our 

 first missionary, Mr. Marsden. They look it, too, 

 with their fat, jolly faces, set off with good real 

 teeth, the secret of which one would gladly know. 

 It may, however, belong to back generations of 

 unsophisticated lives, simplicity of diet, and free- 

 dom from care and worry, which their whole 

 aspect betokens. The fat wives are not weighed 

 down by domestic duties, if any there be, other 

 than wearing a very good baby tied on behind. 

 They share their husbands' tobacco, and are not too 

 timid to frequent the hotels to quench their thirst. 

 There is a theory that their good teeth are due 

 to the rough and severe mastication imposed upon 

 them in the past, and that our teeth disappear 

 through want of something to do. We eat such 

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