ing brows, and noses of which
little but the upturned nostrils could in some cases be discerned. These
savages wore little clothing and built no good houses, nothing but rude
shelters against the inclemency of the weather. They were ignorant and
treacherous, and the Maoris regarded them with dislike and contempt; but
their women looked with favour on the handsome Maori men, and a mixture
of the two races was the result. This tradition both explains and is
confirmed by the two different racial types which still exist side by
side or blent together among the Maoris. It seems, therefore, highly
probable that before the advent of the Maoris the North Island of New
Zealand was occupied by a people of inferior culture belonging to the
Melanesian stock, who may themselves have had a strain of Polynesian
blood in their veins and some Polynesian words in their language. This
at least is suggested by some features in the Maori traditions about
them. For these savages told the Maoris that they were the descendants
of the crews of three fishing canoes which had been driven to sea from
their own land in past times, and that their original home was a much
warmer country than New Zealand. All these various indications may
perhaps be reconciled by supposing that the dark predecessors of the
Maoris in New Zealand were a Melanesian people, who had accidentally
drifted from Fiji, the inhabitants of which have long been in contact
with their Polynesian neighbours on the east, the Tongans.[14] They
received from the Maoris the name of Maruiwi,[15] and were perhaps of
the same stock as the Moriori of the Chatham Islands; for two skulls of
the Moriori type have been found in an old deposit at Wanganui, near the
south end of the North Island of New Zealand.[16]

[14] Elsdon Best, "The Peopling of New Zealand," _Man_, xiv.
(1914) pp. 73-76. The Melanesian strain in the Maoris was
recognised by previous writers. See J. S. Polack, _Manners and
Customs of the New Zealanders_ (London, 1840), i. 6, "The nation
consists of two aboriginal and distinct races, differing, at an
earlier period, as much from each other as both are similarly
removed in similitude from Europeans. A series of intermarriages
for centuries has not even yet obliterated the marked difference
that originally stamped the descendant of the now amalgamated
races. The first may be known by a dark-brown complexion, well
formed and prominent f