462 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
that the natives are not dead, but only gone farther inland. This argu- 
ment in the case of the Maoris in the South Island, is clearly disproved by the 
fact that it has long been possible there accurately to count every native, no 
matter how far back they may go. Altogether apart from the mere question 
of statistics, I am quite positive that this objection in this island is perfectly 
groundless. Take this island: the natives round this city have almost died 
out ; at the Hutt, but a remnant exists; the pa at Waiwhetu is gone; there 
are no natives in the Wainui-o-mata valley; or up the Hutt valley. In the 
Wairarapa many pas have vanished, and but a remnant remains in the 
others. My own knowledge of Hawke’s Bay, extending back about twenty- 
five years, assures me that recent statistics even do not prove sufficiently 
elearly the rapidity of extinction. In that short time I know of several 
populous kaingas quite deserted. I know that formerly, twenty years ago, 
there were a large number of natives in the district where now but very few 
exist. All along the east coast, from this spot to Napier, they have greatly 
dwindled. If we go up the other coast we find the same thing. About 
twenty years ago there were 800 living at Porirua and near neighbourhood, 
now there are 58. At Waikanae some forty years ago there were 500 fight- 
ing men besides women and children, now there are only 20. There was 
a pa at Paikakariki, now one family dwells there. Farther up is Otaki, 
where the population has greatly dwindled, and so we may go up through 
Horowhenua, with a fraction of its former population, onwards through the 
now almost deserted Manawatu and Rangitikei, to Wanganui, and right 
along the coast to Parihaka and Taranaki. How many warriors could now 
be put in the field as compared with those who encountered our troops 
under General Cameron. Clearly the natives have “gone farther back” 
than Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki. If we start at the North Cape and travel 
downwards from the Three Kings, we have seen by statistics but a fraction 
of their numbers now exist north of Auckland, and a journey southwards 
to the Waikato and Thames will reveal the same scantiness of population. 
Judge Fenton showed us how they decreased in the Waikato in a few 
years, and all observers admit that the natives are fewer in the centre 
of this island and about the East Cape than they were twenty years 83° 
The proof is overwhelming, the natives have not gone farther back—they 
have died, 
The Maoris and the weaker Morioris in the Chatham Islands are almost 
extinct. Bishop Selwyn preached to 1,000; now i 
Maoris and Morioris, is 126. 
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