m 
who also lived after a manner, but it was the manner of their 
fathers. 
How very different is the fate of that race of men! They, 
too, had emigrated in olden times from distant isles, in order 
to enjoy a better , happier life in the new country. Perhaps they, 
too, found here, what they had anticipated, through a long series 
of generations. But their time is past; and like a dreary picture 
of the romantic medieval age their life appears by the side of the 
cheerful picture of to-day. 
The Isthmus of Auckland was of yore the dwelling-place of a 
mighty tribe of Maoris, the scene of the peaceful occupations, of the 
festivals and games of a people, who, if barbarous, were not the less 
gifted; but also the scene of the bloodiest cannibal-massacres, in 
consequence of which that tribe gradually vanished from the earth. 
The Ngatiwatuas, who were living here, are said to have numb- 
ered but a few generations ago from 20,000 to 30,000, and those 
extinct volcanoes were at that time acting the part of mountain- 
forts like the castles of the middle ages. By their commanding 
position and the prospect far o’er the country , they were excee- 
dingly well adapted for watch-towers and forts. As in Europe 
the ruins upon rocks and mountain heights are the gloomy memen- 
toes of club-law, where “might alone made right;” so also the 
heights of New Zealand are peculiarly marked as the fastnesses 
and places of refuge of powerful and tyrannical warriors and chiefs. 
Their summits bore the well-fortified Pahs of the chiefs; and at the 
foot of the hills , the dwellings of the serfs ranged to a great 
distance , with the Kumara-fields which they had to till. The 
ruins of those dwelling-places at the foot of the heights are seen 
to this very day; most distinctly perhaps at the foot of Mt. Smart; 
nor the mountain-cones themselves bear less evident testimony to 
their former destination. 
The slopes of the hills look, I might say, tattooed, like fhe faces 
of the old surviving warriors , who have been spared from the car- 
nage of the cannibal age. They are terraced, that is to say, terraces 
are cut around the declivities, 10 to 12 feet high, which are visible 
