412 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



impair their grace and beauty. The Mahori women 

 employ themselves solely in household work, making mats 

 and tapa cloth, plaiting ornamental baskets, and engaging 

 in such outdoor employments as fruit-gathering and 

 fishing, which in their delightful climate and in congenial 

 companionship are relaxations or pastimes rather than 

 labour. The Polynesians are kind and attentive to the 

 sick and aged, and unlimited hospitality is everywhere 

 practised ; and, what is even more admirable and uncommon, 

 the chiefs work as well as the common people, and think 

 it a disgrace if they do not excel in all departments of 

 labour. 



The man and woman of Samoa here represented from 

 photographs by Colonel Swinton are not of the 

 highest type, but may be taken as average specimens. 

 (Fig. 57 and 58) 



How sad it is that all the more fertile islands inhabited 

 by this most interesting race — a race that seems, under 

 favourable conditions, capable of developing a true civil- 

 ization higher than any the world can yet show, should be 

 seized upon by the great nations which especially pride 

 themselves upon their civilization, not for the purpose of 

 helping on the development of this fine race which the 

 world can ill afford to lose, but solely in their own interests, 

 political, naval, or commercial. If we contrast this conduct 

 and the national character it implies, with that of the 

 Mahoris as depicted by unprejudiced persons from Captain 

 Cook down to our own day, we shall be driven to the con- 

 clusion that in all the essentials of true civilization these 

 uncultivated people are fully the equals — perhaps even 

 the superiors of ourselves. 



The Mahoris are Caitcasians. 



Keeping in view the mental and moral characteristics 

 of the Mahori peoples as here briefly indicated, and con- 

 sidering carefully the physical characters shown by the 

 photographs here reproduced, we shall not be surprised to 

 find that the tendency of modern anthropologists is to 

 class them as belonging to the same great primary division 



