22 Tyunsactio7is. 



indignation can be more efFectnally 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 associcitions 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 varioiTS 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 tlie 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 Deculiar 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 

 generally of a pile of stones or a hole dug in the ground, to which a name was 

 given significant of the cause which gave lise to such boundary being agreed 



