INTRODUCTION. 
O 
find tlie way in the dark ; but, instead of trying to erect 
a shed, or light a fire in the native style, what did they do ? 
Just what most Europeans would in similar circumstances — 
nothing at all ; they felt themselves perfectly helpless — they 
stood under a tree the whole of the night, without fire, food, 
or shelter. The effects of that night proved fatal to poor 
Cunningham ; he caught a violent cold, which settled on his 
lungs, and in a few months he was in his grave. 
The native is not deficient in those arts which are essential to 
his comfort. His house is constructed with great skill and even 
elegance,* his garments with much beauty, and ornamented 
with a border of elaborately wrought embroidery ; his little 
farm is tilled with the greatest care, not a weed to be seen ; 
in fact, he has carried those arts with which he is acquainted 
to as much perfection, as they are apparently capable of. 
This is not the character of the savage : if, then, in these 
respects we cannot view the Maori race as such, it must 
be in their social state; when their fierce and unsubdued 
passions have full play in their cruel and bloody wars, and 
their former cannibal feasts, — these mark the savage. The 
truth cannot be concealed, neither is it desirable to do so ; 
but is not human nature in its unrenewed state, much the 
same every where ? Are there no European savages as 
well ? 
When the way in which the New Zealanders lived is 
considered, the crimes they committed cannot be wondered 
at. Shut out from the rest of the world, without any to set 
them a pattern of what was right, or to reprove what was 
wrong ; is it surprising, that morally they should have 
degenerated, even from the standard of their forefathers ? 
They were not always addicted to war, neither were they 
always cannibals ; the remembrance of the origin of those 
horrid customs, is still preserved amongst them. If the 
* The natives rendered valuable assistance in this sort of work (building 
houses for the Port Nicholson settlers), at which they were very expert. It 
must be confessed that the huts built by them were much superior to those of 
our handiwork ; many of them, indeed, deserved to be called houses, and were, 
when I quitted Port Nicholson, still used by emigrants of all classes. — 4th page 
of Hon. H. W. Petrels New Zealand: Smith, Elder, & Co., London, 1841. 
