10 
INTRODUCTION. 
crops on which they had to depend for winter subsistance, 
the consequence was frequent famines ; to such straits have 
they been reduced that there are traditions of men kill- 
ing and eating even their own wives and children ; can we 
then wonder that they should eat the bodies of those slain 
in fight. Still there were many even in the worst times, 
who entertained almost as strong a loathing for such food as 
we do ; yet when most debased in fcheir social relations, 
there was much to admire : the love of their offspring and 
relations, who were more closely bound together, by the 
mutual tie of self-preservation ; their good feeling and kind- 
liness one towards another ; the careful avoiding all cause of 
quarrels, and powerful emotions of joy, on meeting with absent 
friends, all tell in their favour, and prove them not to have 
been wanting in natural affection. In war they were savages ; 
in peace they were not deficient in many of the kindlier 
feelings belonging to our nature. In war, their distorted 
features made them resemble fiends ; in peace, in the bosom 
of their families, they became more like what they should be 
and have been, under the gentle influence of the Gospel. 
Naturally a noble race, bodily and mentally superior to most 
of the Polynesians, their fine intelligent countenances present 
the exterior of a fair-built house, which only requires to be 
suitably furnished, and it may be hoped that they have 
already passed the worst part of that transition state, which 
it took centuries to bring our own country through, before 
it attained its present highly advanced position in the scale 
of nations. 
Though fifteen years of war have elapsed since the above 
was written, the author does not retract anything here ad- 
vanced, the back-sliding of some is not that of the whole ; 
and if even all the atrocities reported to have been committed 
were true — which is to be doubted — the stigma can no more 
justly be applied to the entire race, than the enormities which 
individuals are constantly guilty of at home, can brand the 
nation with their crimes, and prove that its religion as well 
as morality, is only skin deep, as has been stated of the 
Maori race. 
