b. 
CorENso.—On the Maori Races of New Zealand. 373 
slave, as they were too valuable, and they wished them to become attached 
to them, knowing, too, their dependence upon them; and if they did, it was 
almost sure to be one who was incorrigibly bad, and had been already often 
warned and sentenced ; who himself, perhaps, cared little for life, and who, 
in being killed, would be mercifully instantly despatched (the greatest 
mercy the New Zealander ever knew). But their most cruel, murderous, 
and cannibal atrocities were invariably perpetrated on the immediate 
return of the victors (mostly by water in their war canoes) to their 
homes. Then, on hearing from the heralds of their loss, the infuriated 
women who had remained at home—widows, sisters, and daughters— 
would frenziedly fly upon the trembling captives, demand them to be 
given up to them as wtw (payment or satisfaction), and cruelly murder 
them in cold blood; and to add to their horrors, perhaps some of these— 
wives- or daughters of the vanquished—might have been taken to wife 
by some of the victor chiefs during their long return voyage, and who 
themselves were now utterly unable to save them.  Disobedience of 
children to parents, a common fault of their bringing up, with all its 
many kindred vices, was also very prominent; this mostly ended in a 
total filial disregard. It seems strange that children generally, after 
puberty, should scarcely ever think of their parents who had always been so 
kind to them, although the parents still continued to show their great 
solicitude for their children. Lying too, of all kinds, was another highly 
characteristic vice; common every day, lying was never by them considered 
to bea sin. But the chiefs were too sadly given to ealumniate one another 
with all kinds of fictions. No one ever believed all that any one should say. 
It has often seemed to the writer as if a New Zealander could not possibly 
relate any matter truly. Their most publie and solemn promises and 
asseverations, even to the making of peace or a truce, after imposing and 
gaining their own terms, could always without any shame, and without any 
pretext, be wholly scattered to the winds at pleasure. Their heartless and 
cold neglect of sick, infirm, and aged parents, relatives, and friends, is 
another sad charge which is too true. Many a poor creature has slowly yet 
early died through sheer neglect. Fish, and birds, and pork, and fruit, and 
other good things, have often been in profusion in the village for the whole 
and hearty, of which the sick and infirm, though desirous, never tasted 
and, knowing their own people too well, never once solicited. Sometimes, 
no doubt, ites gross neglect was owing to superstition ; and the miseries of 
the sufferers were perhaps lessened through knowing that such had ever 
been their custom. Of their common immorality much has been said; and 
very much has been laid to their charge, far more, it is reasonably believed, 
than is their just due. At all events the point of view must not be that of 
