210 
nosian tribes so fully corresponds with their nature, their manners 
and their language, that the same cannot he interpreted as the 
issue of a remoter and older system, but must be considered as 
original to them. The Polynesians, we must conclude, had their 
own sphere of creation , and science has at yet not been able to 
reduce the different spheres of creation to one common centre. 
Equally obscure as the origin of the Maoris is their history, 
after they had once established themselves in New Zealand. It is 
only certain , that 
North Island was 
first populated, and 
that South Island 
was colonized by 
degrees from the 
North . 1 Previous to 
the immigration of 
the Maoris, New 
Zealand seems to 
have been totally 
uninhabited. The 
inhabitants of North 
Island, it is true, tell 
of savages with long 
hair , long fingers 
and nails , who eat 
. ... . ,. their food raw, and 
who are supposed to 
live in the most inaccessible ravines and forests of the Tararua 
range. These savages who are supposed to be the last of the 
1 In Cook's times the whole population was estimated at 100,000, in 1859 it 
only amounted to about 56,000, and of this number 53,000 fall to North Island and 
only 2283 to South Island. Only within the latest period, in 1838, the Chatham 
Islands, also, were populated from New Zealand in consequence of the emigration 
of a portion of the Ngatiawa tribe, who by war were forced to leave their home 
on Cook Strait, and who were conveyed over to those islands by a European Cap- 
, tain. In 1859 the number of Chatham Island Maoris was estimated at 500. 
