338 Notes on Sport and Travel m 



we knew him first ; honourable and cannibal, brave 

 and knavish, hospitable and murderous ; anything 

 and everything but, I honestly believe, treacherous 

 or hypocritical, and all our teachings have never 

 taught him those base vices. 



When Cook first found him he had, I fancy, 

 reached nearly as high on the ladder of civilisation 

 as was good for him, possibly a little higher, for 

 from the date of Cook's first visit to that of the 

 regular colonisation of the island by Great Britain, he 

 had most seriously dwindled in numbers, a pretty sure 

 sign that he had done all that he was created to do. 

 He had done all he could to prepare the ground for 

 us, and was going before we interfered with him. 

 He is going still, and will go till he has gone ; 

 and we are no more to blame than the guava shrub, 

 which takes the place of that infinity of lovely 

 plants which used to be the delight of the traveller 

 in the sweet South Seas. The Maori is going, and 

 the time is not far distant when his only representa- 

 tive will be his dried head in some Philistine museum ; 

 where for a short time yet it may be pointed out to 

 Sabbath-school children (with an eye to the infantile 

 coppers) as the remains of a savage animal who 

 used to eat missionaries, and eventually be cast out 

 into the dust-bin, without a thought of the great 

 warrior-soul which once inhabited it. 



No early race of any intelligence (one always 

 bars ' niggers ' in discussion, as one does Niagara 

 and Mount Everest) was ever so petted and cared 



