them meet one another and rub noses, which is the Maori
mode of salutation. This race has some very peculiar habits: they never
eat salt; they have no fixed industry, and no idea of time or its
divisions into hours and months; they are, like our North American
Indians, constitutionally lazy, are intensely selfish, and seem to care
nothing for their dead; they have a quick sense of insult, but cannot as
a rule be called pugnacious; they excite themselves to fight by
indulging in strange war-dances and by singing songs full of
braggadocio; and, after having been thus wrought up to a state of
frenzy, they are perfectly reckless as to personal hazard. The Maori is
not, however, a treacherous enemy; he gives honorable notice of his
hostile intent, warring only in an open manner, thus exhibiting a degree
of chivalry unknown to our American Indians. Money with the Maori is
considered only as representing so much rum and tobacco. Alcohol is his
criterion of value; bread and meat are quite secondary.

The name "Maori" is that which these aborigines gave themselves. If
there were any human beings upon these islands when the Maoris first
arrived, they doubtless fell a prey to the cannibalistic habits of the
newcomers, whose insatiable appetite for human flesh was irrepressible.
When discovered by Cook, they were the lowest of savage races; they knew
scarcely anything of the mechanic arts, their skill being limited to the
scooping out of a boat from the trunk of a tree, and the fabrication of
fishing-nets from the coarse fibre of the wild flax. They also made
spears, shields, and clubs. They had no beasts of burden, and so their
women were made to supply the place. Their agriculture was confined to
the raising of sweet potatoes and the taro root, while their more
substantial food consisted of fish, rats, wild fowl, and human flesh.
Captain Cook estimated, when he first visited them, that the Maoris had
passed the period of their best days. He thought that in the century
previous to his coming hither they had eaten about one-fourth of their
number. The race is now estimated at only thirty-six or thirty-eight
thousand, though it is certain that it embraced a hundred thousand about
a century ago. The decrease in ten years is apparent to observant
persons, a fact not clearly accounted for by any excess of living on
their part, though their daily habits are not very commendable,
especially as to drink. They are all most inveterate smoke