4 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
For my own part I may again repeat (what, I believe, I have said to you 
before), that it is to such sources we have primarily and mainly to look for 
much that relates to the manners and customs of the ancient New Zealander. 
In those old narrations we get to know what they really were; and even 
then more, perhaps, from casual or incidental matters than from the main 
subject itself. But then such must have been related by the ancient men 
themselves, chiefs and priests (tohungas) of the olden time, and not by the 
present loquacious and mendacious generation, be their position what it 
may,—for all such are not only grossly ignorant of the past, but are also 
more or less vitiated concerning the same, through their intercourse with 
Europeans, both willingly and unwillingly. And when, in addition to all 
this, what they may have to say is frequently taken down and translated by 
“free and easy” young interpreters,—often ignorant of the first principles 
of the noble Maori language, and too much inclined to dress up what they 
hear, as if writing a novel or romance,—the result may be easily guessed. 
And here, perhaps, I may be permitted briefly to mention that—(as it is 
pretty well known I have collected, during my long residence among the 
Maoris, very much of their old history, traditions, etc.)—I have been often 
requested to publish, in a separate form, what I have so amassed and 
known; but that I have hitherto refused to do so, for I seek neither pelf nor 
fame (as a book-maker), but merely to relate, in plain words, what I believe 
to be genuine and authentic, leaving it for those who may come after me to 
“make the book,”—to fuse together the ores I may have laboriously sought 
out, and collected, and brought to the surface. 
In all those historical traditions we shall find much of war,—of bloody, 
desolating wars, with all their hideous and savage accompaniments! far 
more indeed than we could wish.* But war, as Cook early and sagaciously 
detected, was the very life and genius of the people ; hence, too, they did not 
fear death. Not, however, but that it might have been better among them, 
for it will be found that, in almost all cases, their wars arose from some 
thoughtless or gross infringement of common rights. Yet even here we 
shall meet with much of extreme courtesy, and of fine feelings, which would 
have adorned a chivalrous European age; and that, too, in the midst of 
dreadful harrowing recitals of burning revenge for wrongs,—of extreme 
cruelty, —of great, yet simple superstition, and of hair-breadth and 
marvellous escapes. 
* But the most famed and civilized nations of antiquity were, in this respect, quite 
as bad,—e.g., the Assyrian and Egyptian ‘‘ Records ;” and Polybius, (who had himself 
seen the arene | =e vs et Romans), says, “‘ when a town is taken by storm by the 
t 1, but even dogs eut in two, and other animals 
hewn limb from ‘Him, ” (x. 16, ) ‘Note, also, Saul’s slaying of the Amalekites, (1 Sam. xv.) 
Roman s, 
