8 
INTRODUCTION. 
islands possessing few natural productions; we cannot, there¬ 
fore, wonder, that they should be less advanced than the 
natives who conquered them; hence their inferiority in their 
garments, their houses, their canoes; these latter are rudely 
constructed of a frame-work of poles, a sort of wicker-work, 
the interstices being filled up with sea weed : their houses are 
miserable holes in the earth, roofed over; there they sleep 
with their children huddled up between their naked thighs for 
warmth ; even the Maori call them Parakiwara (black fellows). 
They present an instance to what a sad state man may fall, 
when cut off from the rest of his race, and mind is deprived of 
the benefit of fellow mind ; how unable it is to bear up against 
such accumulated evils ; how forcibly does such a state remind 
us of the prodigal, who, from being clothed in fine apparel, 
with a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and from being 
fed with the choicest viands, when he leaves his father’s house, 
falls step by step, morally and physically, until he would fain 
have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat. 
May not this beautiful parable have its literal fulfilment 
in the history of the New Zealand race; in it may we not 
behold one of the long lost tribes of Israel, which, with its 
fellows, having abandoned the service of the true God, and 
cast aside his Word, fell step by step in the scale of civili¬ 
zation ; deprived of a fixed home, became nomade wan¬ 
derers over the steppes of Asia, a bye-word and a reproach 
among the nations, and gradually retreated until in the lapse 
of ages they reached the sea, and thence, still preserving their 
wandering character, from island to island driven by winds 
and currents, and various causes, they finally reached New 
Zealand, and there fallen to their lowest state of degradation, 
given up to the fiercest passions, consumed, and being con¬ 
sumed, they are enabled to reflect, repent, and amend, and 
resolve to arise and go to their Father. 
Even after the New Zealand race had sufficiently in¬ 
creased to colonize the two islands, there was no bond of 
union amongst them ; split into innumerable families and 
tribes, each under its own peculiar head and independent of 
the rest, it is not to be wondered, that constant feuds should 
