38 TE-AWA-ITI. [PART i. 



compressed and beaten hard. All the houses have 

 been built by the natives, and some are not inferior to 

 those of the villages in many parts of Europe. The 

 whalers received us with a hearty welcome wherever 

 we came. They are about forty in number, and all 

 live with native women. Their offspring, of whom 

 I counted twenty-one in Te-awa-iti, have finely-cast 

 countenances, and their features remind us little of 

 the admixture of a coloured race ; the skin is not so 

 dark as that of the inhabitants of the south of 

 France ; they generally inherit from the mother the 

 large and fine eye and the dark glossy hair ; there 

 are, however, many individuals with flaxen hair and 

 blue eyes. If you enter a house, you find the wife 

 and her relations generally sitting around the fire 

 and smoking. The " tene'i ra kokoe pakea " (wel- 

 come, stranger) is heard from every mouth. These 

 women do all the domestic labour, and excel their 

 European husbands in sobriety and quiet disposition. 

 Te-awa-iti is situated on the east side of Tory 

 Channel, about two miles from its southern entrance, 

 and twenty-eight miles from the northern entrance 

 of Queen Charlotte's Sound, on the island of Arapaoa, 

 which is throughout its extent of a very hilly na- 

 ture, intersected by ravines and covered with wood. 

 Towards the channel the island forms several small 

 coves, which are now inhabited ; towards Cook's 

 Straits, however, the shores are bold, rocky, and 

 much worn by the fury of the tides and waves. 

 At Te-awa-iti, Tory Channel is three miles broad, and 



