132 POPULAR GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



be visited ; and to many perhaps the most interesting. 

 Since Captain Cook was there in 1770 the natural features 

 can have undergone but little change as yet, altered as it is 

 for the better in its moral aspect. Eor now, instead * of being 

 greeted as we land, by the sight of tatooed natives painted 

 with red ochre and their hair tied up in a bunch on the 

 top of their heads, baling water out of their canoes with a 

 human skull; instead of being invited on shore with the 

 anything but inviting salutation, "Come to us, come on 

 shore, and we will kill you all with our patoo-patoos" we 

 now find Englishmen regarded, for the most part, as friends ; 

 and though tatooed faces are still to be seen (contrasting a 

 little oddly sometimes with an English cravat), tatooing is 

 going out of fashion. Now, instead of no better religious 

 worship than an offering of a basket of fern-roots, many a 

 good Maori may be seen going to church service with a 

 Maori prayer-book in his hand ; and " since the Gospel of 

 peace has been preached, and war has ceased to be their oc- 

 cupation," we find them described by Sir James Eoss as 

 " dispersing in small groups over the more fertile parts of 

 the land, building detached cottages and small villages, and 

 living in a degree of comfort and security to which they 

 were formerly strangers/ 5 



