A REMARKABLE MAORI MANUSCRIPT. 285 



which an over-brainy public is apt to visit on new en- 

 terprises which do not prove successful. 



I shall not attempt to define the Kewahwenaw method 

 too suddenly. I shall first make some statements con- 

 cerning its merits, and furnish some illustrations of its 

 useful application. It might tend to raise expectation 

 too high to say it is a scheme for superseding the ex- 

 travagance, inconvenience and aristocratic tendencies of 

 the antiquated idea of personal competency for any duty. 

 While this is true, it is obvious the whole import of the 

 truth has not yet been adequately apprehended, since it 

 is plain to any person who observes closely that the crowds 

 who press for places demanding responsibility and intelli- 

 gence are not yet altogether of the least responsible and 

 least intelligent class. Still, it is gratifying to perceive 

 a constant improvement in this respect. 



Let us take a particular field for illustration; I refer 

 to field-geology. Years ago, when our country had been 

 but recently settled, the idea sprang up that the public 

 territory might be carefully examined for the discovery 

 of valuable mineral gums. Nu-Jerk, happily, was one 

 of the first provinces to act upon this suggestion; but 

 Xu-Jerk, unhappily, was under the chieftainship of that 

 distinguished old fogy, Wily urn Elmarsee, who thought 

 he could do no better than to commission four so-called 



A 



scientific gentlemen (for science was then held in high 

 esteem) to enter upon an elaborate plan which would 

 require a decade for its accomplishment. The province 

 once committed to such extravagance, it had to be sub- 

 jected to the humiliation of seeing successive chiefs lend 

 themselves to its indefinite continuance. It is some satis- 

 faction to know, however, that they were men of no more 



