372 Essays. 
which, however, was well known to and encouraged by their first visitors. 
From their childhood they were incessantly prone to practise all manner of 
deceit (maminga, hangareka, hianga), from fun and joke, to imposition and 
fraud, at which they were great adepts, ever glorying in beguiling and 
terrifying. To this list must be added their superstition, or better, perhaps, 
eredulity—ever ready to believe anything strange, new, or wonderful; and 
their excessive ostentation and desire of being talked of, which, ihougn bad 
in the abstract, was, it is reasonably believed, the main cause why several 
apparently good actions were done by them. Perhaps not a little of their 
old industry, and of their hospitality to strangers, is rightly to be attributed 
to this characteristic trait, as well, in some instances at least, of their more 
recent adopting the Christian religion, building chapels, &c. 
29. Their common and biggest vices, which have gained them such sad 
notoriety, were the luxuriant unpruned growths or fruits of their natural 
evil propensities. Their implacability and unmercifulness was but another 
phase of their never-dying revenge; from these came their cold-blooded 
murders, and cruel retaliating on the innocent, which was closely followed 
by cannibalism in all its horrors. Nothing more clearly shows the truth of 
the old adage, “ The best corrupted is the very worst,” than that a party of 
New Zealanders should be so carried away by the diabolical frenzy of the 
moment, as wholly to forget their strongly and highly characteristic natural 
feelings, and kill, roast, and eat little children. In considering, however, 
their savage cannibalism, two things should never be forgotten—(1) that they, 
in practising it, broke no known law, and as they did not think it wrong, 
they never once thought of concealing it; and (2) that as they (their tribe) 
were doing to-day, they (their tribe) had been done by yesterday, and might 
be again to-morrow. Neither should it be altogether lost sight of, that 
commonly a bloody engagement—often the storming of a hill pa, or fort— 
could only take place when both sides were well nigh doubly desperate with 
starvation, and that after the fight was over there was really nothing to eat. 
There can be little doubt but that at such times large bodies of men were 
often in a nearly similar situation, as to want of food, to distressed ship- 
wrecked mariners at sea; with this important addition, of having their worst 
passions dreadfully excited from the smarting of their own wounds, and the 
sight of their dead and dying friends and relatives around them. So much 
may, perhaps, be allowed for their cannibal feasts under such circumstances 
on the battle-field; but those which often took place afterwards, although 
on a much smaller scale, cannot be so palliated. At the same time it should 
be remembered, that a race who ever thought so little of human life as 
to commit suicide at the death of a husband or favourite child, 
cell not estimate Highly the Hifo of a slave. At home they rarely killed a 
