29 Transactions. 
indignation can be more effectually roused than by disputing his title to land. 
This love for his land is not, as many would suppose, the love of a child for 
his toys ; the title of a New Zealander to his land is connected with many 
and powerful associations in his mind. He is not, of course, what we call a 
civilized man, but in dealing with him we deal with a man of powerful 
intellect, whose mind can think and reason as logically on any subject with 
which he is acquainted, as his more favoured European brethren, and whose 
love for the homes of his fathers is associated with the deeds of their bravery, 
with the feats of his boyhood, and the long rest of his ancestors for genera- 
tions. The New Zealander is not accustomed to law and parchment, or to 
wills and bequests, in gaining knowledge of or receiving a title to the lands of 
his fathers ; nor would he quietly allow any stranger to teach him what lands 
were his, or what lands were not; what were the names of the boundaries, the 
creeks, mountains, and rivers in his own district. The thousand names within 
the limits of his hereditary lands were his daily lesson from childhood. The 
son of a chief invariably attended his father, or his grandfather, in all his 
fishing, trapping, or spearing excursions; and it was in these that he learnt, by 
occular demonstration, the exact boundaries of his lands, and especially heard 
their various names. It was a custom with the Maoris in ancient times to eat 
the rat—a rat indigenous to this country, and caught in traps set on the tops 
of the mountain ranges. This was a source of part of their daily food, and it 
was therefore, with them, a point of great importance to occupy every avail- 
able portion of their lands with these traps; and as most of the tribal 
boundaries are along the range of the highest hills or mountains, and as these 
were the common resort of the rat, every New Zealand chief soon naturally 
became acquainted with the exact boundary of his land claims. He did not, 
however, limit these claims to the dry land—they extended to the shellfish, and 
even out to sea, where he could fish for cod-or shark, or throw his net for 
mackerel ; nor did he go inadvertently to these places, and trust to chance for 
finding his fishing grounds—he had land-marks, and each fishing-ground and 
land-mark had its own peculiar name ; these to him were more than household 
words ; his fathers had fished there, and he himself and his tribe alone knew 
these names and land-marks. Where a creek was the dividing boundary of 
his lands this was occupied by eel-dams. These dams were not of wicker- 
work, that might be carried away by a flood—labour and art were bestowed 
upon their construction, so that generations might pass, all of whom in turn 
might put their eel-basket down by the carved and re-ochred totara post 
which their great grandfather had placed there. When the dividing boundary 
between two tribes ran along a valley, land-marks were put up; these consisted 
oe of a pile of stones or a hole dug in the ground, to which a name was ' 
ven significant of the cause which gave rise to such boundary being agreed 
x 
