CoLENSO. — On the Maori Baces 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 utu (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 imable 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 be a sin. But the chiefs were too sadly given to calumniate 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 public 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 fziends, 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, such 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 



