side are the "pink terraces," their hue being several | plenty of dry ferns spread thickly over the heated floor shades deeper. They are not in form quite so handsome; for a couch, we were able to defy the elements. but the natural baths are finer, and large enough to accommodate several bathers at a time. The stone has a soft, velvety feeling, something like that of a plaster cast. The water in these baths is of a beautiful turquoise-blue. Quite a company of tourists had in the meanwhile gathered here, and on the 7th of March, 1881 (answering to our August), a party was made up for a camping trip through this lake region. Our boats, tents and accoutrements were conveyed in carts to Roto-Rua, and our tents were first pitched in a copse of titre-trees upon the shores of a deep bay, whose waters sent up a continuous cloud of sulphury vapor. Surrounding the copse was a crust of dry mineral deposit, through holes and crevices of which burst columns of steam, and noisy spouts of hot water. The odors were anything but delightful. One of our Maori, who had picked up a little English, aptly described them as "too stink." During the night there was a fierce thunder-storm; but with stout canvas overhead, and Early in the morning we started for a row of eight or nine miles to the northern end of the lake, where is its outlet, near which our second camp was pitched. Two miles from the shore is the island of Macoia, the scene of a pretty Maori legend, but historically memorable for a great cannibal massacre perpetrated there some sixty years ago. The natives now living hereabouts are a good deal more than half civilized. They wear European clothes, can read in their own language, which has been reduced to writing by missionaries, and are not entirely uninstructed in the Christian religion. We were every day visited by groups from surrounding villages, bringing with them substantial tokens of their goodwill. After a week here VAPOR SPRINGS, KOROPETE. we moved 8 mile further, and, passing the mouth of the Ohau River, were welcomed by the people of the village of Moria. After a palaver, thirty of them enrolled their names upon our temperance pledge. Within sight of Moria are several hills which have been shaped into terraced earthworks, wherein different tribes lived in the days, not very long ago, when the chief end of man seemed to be to kill and eat his neighbor. Roto-Ita, a pretty little lake, was the next scene of our explorations. Its environments of rolling hills and precipitous cliffs are dotted with isolated wha-res and villages. Through the deep gullies and round the projecting promontories the winds blow furiously at times, raising the waters into choppy, white-capped waves, which our boatmen dared not encounter. But keeping under the protection of a lee-shore, our two boats glided into the quiet little cove of Manupirni, where we spent a quiet night near a famous sulphur-bath, supplied by a brooklet of steaming water which gushes from the base of an overshadowing hill. Next day a row of seven or eight miles brought us to Tapuaeharuru, at the end of Rato-Ita. Every trace of European habitation had been left behind us, and only Maori were to be seen. They swarmed around us in peopled. In the lake was an island, with a village of orderly groups. Fortunately one of our men had relatives three hundred dwellers. One day a Tohunga, or priest, here, and potatoes, corn and crayfish flowed into our larder, came to the shore and shouted to the islanders to send a which had come to need replenishing; so much so that canoe to ferry him across to the island. No canoe was after three or four days I was deputed, with three native sent, and the wrath of the Tohunga was aroused. He boatmen, to go back to Ohinemutu for provisions. But a called his taniuhas, or subservient demons, and bade them gale sprang up and we were obliged to put in for shore. do vengeance for the affront put upon him. In an inWe passed the night in a wha-re, the occupants of which stant the island sank beneath the waters, and of its dwellwere acquaintances of ours, and they welcomed us to the ers, only three escaped to tell the tale. Ever since that best they had. The wha-re was quite too small for the time the lake has been the abode of a taniwha, who somefourteen humans, and fleas innumerable, who were to times appears in visible form; now as a huge fish or lizard; occupy it. After consideration it was decided that the then as a great rock or a lofty tree; but in every shape “Paheka" (white man) should have lodgings inside, and keeping watch and ward over the spot where some sunken a space two feet wide was assigned to me. The room was rocks mark the site of the submerged island, and preventheated up to furnace pitch; the embers were pitched out- ing all approach to it. One old resident of Tapuaeharuru side; a song of welcome was struck up, and I arranged soberly assured me that many years ago he was sitting myself for the night. But the stench and the vermin soon upon the shore, and saw a canoe, with four men of a disbecame unendurable, and I bolted for the outer air, and tant tribe, rowing for the forbidden spot. All at once the rolling myself up in my blanket, tried to sleep. Three canoe was drawn under water, and nothing was ever heard gaunt, flea-bitten dogs seemed bent on sharing the com- of it or its occupants. forts of my blanket, and when morning broke, flinging bright rays over the lake, I concluded that it was not best to try to go on to Ohinemutu. Still the mission was not wholly unsuccessful, for my hospitable host furnished us with a generous kit of sweet potatoes and crayfish to carry back. From Tapuaeharuru the distance is only a mile and a half to Roto-ehu, the next of this chain of lakes. There is a narrow, level path, over which our boats were carried, each by seven sturdy Maori, who kept up a wild and not unmusical chant. Launched upon the smooth waters, we soulled across the south end of the lake, and through a lagoon swimming with ducks reached a warm creek, up which we ascended a quarter of a mile to a hot spring which gushes up through the sand, through an aperture three or four feet in diameter, then spreads out into a considerable pool. A cold spring sends its water into one side of this pool, so that we could take just what sort of bath we liked. Indeed, we could take a hot and cold bath at once. Head and shoulders might be in cool water while the feet were in a current scalding hot. Close by this spring stands a ghastly memento, being a a wooden image with tattooed face and body wrapped in a white shirt, commemorative of a man who, six months ago, came to his death by suffocation in one of the sulphurous pools. The ducks in the neighboring lagoon have been declared tapu, and no one of them may be killed until the bones of the man have been regularly interred. Somehow the ducks would seem to have got knowledge of this tapu-hence the immense numbers congregated in this temporary sanctuary. But when the tapu is dissolved they will suffer for their over-confidence. After the conclusion of our lake trip we took up our residence in the village of Wairoa, in a part of a not uncomfortable house, which had been a mission-house. The mission was broken up at the time of the Maori war of 1860-64, and has never been resumed. The house was occupied by a gentleman whose wife is the daughter of the former missionary; and we set up housekeeping. Late in the Summer we went to Auckland, having it partly in mind to return to Maori-land before pursuing our journey to Europe by way of Australia, Here at Auckland, or, rather, at the suburban village of North Shore, these closing pages are written early in January, 1882. We are constantly hearing from our Maori friends, and every account leads us to believe that our efforts for temperance among them have not been in vain, though a few of the signers have broken the pledge. All the more reason this why some one should be sent to carry on the good work already begun. We hope we have found the man, if means for his support can be had. I believe that there is no more promising field for missionary labor than among the Maori; but I am firmly convinced that with them the principle of total abstinence from all intoxicating drink must be the first article of the creed. However it may be with others, a Maori cannot be a "moderate drinker." With this much can be done; without it nothing. Here, in conclusion, I will sum up the general results of our twelvemonth's experience of the Maori, during which, I think, I have come really to know them better, I believe, than any other white man has done. Physically, the Maori are a fine people. In stature and physical strength they will compare favorably with EuroBetween Roto-Ehu and Rhoto-Ma, the last, smallest and peans. Mentally and morally, in most respects, they rank most beautiful of this chain of lakes, is a portage of less far above the majority of uncivilized people. Generally than a mile. Over this our boats were borne, and they are of a light-brown color, with straight black hair launched upon its dark-blue waters, overhung by sombre and prominent features. I have seen a few of much forests, the shores spreading here and there into reaches darker color, and with hair almost woolly, indicating a of white sand beach, broken at frequent intervals by almost portion of other blood. Whence came the admixture is a perpendicular bluffs. Pitching our tents upon a fine matter of conjecture. Until the advent of the white, a beach, we spent three delightful April weeks-the season little more than a century ago, there is no evidence, from corresponding to our Indian Summer days. Our party tradition or otherwise, that a single person from other were the sole occupants of the region. Pigeons and wild shores had touched the islands since the first canoe-loads, pigs were ours for the killing. Coming back from our a thousand in all, they say, drifted thither. I am inclined daily excursions, we would gather around the blazing to think that these blackest people are sprung from abocamp-fires at evening; and not unfrequently our Maori at-rigines, who were here when the Maori came. But in tendants would amuse us with their songs, dances and other respects I see no special difference between them mimic fights, or with some of their weird legends. Among and their brown neighbors. these was that of the sunken island of Roto-Ma. That the Maori are rapidly decreasing in numbers is a Long ago-so runs the legend-this region was thickly fact patent to all. I do not find that this is the result of any prevalent pestilential disease. I do not find that this decadence, which has been steadily going on for several generations, is caused, as in the case of the Sandwich Isianders, by those nameless diseases contracted from the whites, which have hopelessly corrupted the blond of the race. Infanticide seems to be unknown to them. Certainly, I have never seen anywhere parents more fond of their children. Internecine wars among the tribes for centuries doubtless checked the increase of the race. But there is no reason to suppose that these have been waged to any great extent since 1842, yet they have decreased by almost twothirds in the last forty years. The war with the English, some twenty years ago, could not have been very destructive of life. It is estimated that there were not more than 2,000 Maori in arms, and it took 15,000 British troops to put them down. This war was waged mainly in the Tauranga region, and the accounts which we have of it speak well, not only for the bravery of the Maori, but also for a bumanity which was scarcely to be looked for in a people removed but a generation or two from cannibalism. Close by Tauranga we saw the remains of the Gate Pah, which was the scene of the fiercest engagement of the war. In attacking this, one division of the assailants fired repeatedly into another, and ten officers, endeavoring to check the panic among their men, were killed, or fatally wounded. One of these fell into the hands of the Maori, who brought him into their pah, propped him up in the ditch upon a soft bed of ferns, and when they were forced to evacuate, left a vessel of water by his side. The one patent fact is, that this decline of the Maori dates distinctively from the time when Europeans began to settle among them in numbers. I can only attribute it to the rum which they freely introduced. To drunkenness, mainly, I attribute their rapid decadence. And hence it is that the gospel of total abstinence is the one most needed to be preached to them. A Maori wha-re is certainly not built on good sanitary principles; but it is, upon the whole, less bad than one will find in many countries which call themselves civilized. It consists of a single room. The sides and roofs are of thatched grass. The inside is of reeds, and between the reeds and the grass is a thick layer of dried rushes. Not a board or a nail is necessary in the whole structure. There are two small openings which serve for door and window. At night these are tightly closed. The floor is strewn with fern-leaves, which serve for a bed, and the occupants are numerous enough to cover the entire space, packed together as closely as they can lie. In the centre four flat stones are arranged so as to form a little cookingplace, and the smoke finds its way out, if it can, through the holes, but most usually remains inside, covering everything with a thick coating of soot. At Ohinemutu, however, some European improvements have begun to creep in. Here and there one will see a wha-re with a glass window and a stone chimney built outside. The whare-runango, or town hall, even has a sheet-iron roof. The front gable is usually ornamented with the effigy of some deceased ancestor, with black feathers to represent hair. The whare ruuango is adorned, inside and out, with numerous effigies of the renowned men of the tribe; an effort being made to symbolize the qualities for which each was famous. One which I saw had a long tongue protruding from his mouth, to show that he had been a great orator; another had a cloven tongue, to set forth that he had won renown as the champion liar of his day. Another was mounted upon a pair of stilts. This, I was told, was in honor of his having been wont, thus equipped, to steal by night into his neighbor's potato-patch, help himself to as much as he could carry off, and take his departure without leaving any telltale footprints behind him. We were spectators at several funerals during our stay in the lake region. They may be best summed up by saying that they had all the characteristic features of a genuine Irish wake, as they are described to us, only intensified beyond anything of which we had read, and kept up as long as the supply of rum, pork and potatoes held out. Of late years, under the teachings of the missionaries, they have begun to bury their dead in decent graves. But the true native way, and by far the most prevalent, is to deposit the remains in the depths of the forest, or upon sequestered islands in the lakes. These burying-places are most sacredly tapu. No Maori, unless specially delegated by his tribe, may set foot in the consecrated ground. Such a profanation would be sure to call down the vengeance of the taipos, or guardian demons of the spot. I once stealthily made my way to one of these places of sepulture on the shore of Lake Tarawera. At the base of a ledge of rocks, and overshadowed by a lofty tree, was a canoe raised upon posts several feet from the ground. It forms the common receptacle for the corpses. There they were piled up in every stage of decay, six or seven layers deep. They had been originally packed in sacks or wrapped in mats, some of them also in motley European fabrics. Through the rents which the elements had made in the strange cerements, we could see bones and skulls often mingled together in ghastly confusion. Some of these kits were very small and well-preserved. These, we suppose, contained only the bare bones, which had in due time been taken out and scraped at a "bone-taugi," and then returned to the canoe. Guns and other personal effects were strewn among the bones without any apprent order. We also saw two cave sepulchres upon an island, in which the bones and dust of generations were lying in one heterogeneous mass. A "bone-tangi" is the great Maori ceremonial. For some reason or other, a tribe will determine to have a grand cry over the bones of their relatives who have died and been deposited in various sepulchres. Delegations are sent to gather the bones, and invitations dispatched to the neighboring tribes to take part in the ceremonial. The bones, having been well scraped and washed, are placed in little kits, the skulls on the outside, with pieces of red wool or flax stuffed into the mouth and ears. name of the deceased is written on the bag, and all of them are set on end in a ghastly row, before which the assembled tribes perform their dances, eat until they are stuffed to repletion, and drink until they cannot stand. After these edifying solemnities each bag of doubly conse secrated bones is deposited in the canoe-tomb of the village to which the deceased belonged. The The Maori language was reduced to writing by the missionaries some fifty years ago. Besides the vowels, a, e, i, o, u, pronounced as in Italian, ten consonants, k, m, n, ng, p, r, t, w, represent every sound; and the people seem unable to distinguish or articulate any other. Hence the names of foreigners undergo odd transformations when coming from their lips. Wiemu is the nearest approach they can make to "David"; the Austrian, Hochstter, of the "Novara Expedition," who has written the best book on New Zealand, was designated as Atiria. My wife's name, "Annie," came pat enough to them; but my own name, "William Snow," was a sore stumbling-block, being transformed into Wiremu Teno. Some twenty years ago two educated Maori chiefs, Wiremu (William) Toetoe and Hemara (Samuel) Rerehau, made a tour in Europe, and were presented to various sovereigns, among others to Queen Victoria. Wiremu was a natural orator, and several of his speeches in his native tongue were printed. I quote the commencement of his congratulatory address to her Majesty as a specimen of the quite mellifluous character of the Maori speech: "Tenakoe! Tenakoe! E Wikitoria tenakoe ete Kuina o Nuitireni. Tenakoe tomatou Rangitira pai, ka nui to manikoa, ka kite maua. I a koe ete kuini o Nuitireni hua puta te nuinga otou ingoa me ou tumari, ki, kei roto i o matou inioinga i o nga tungata o Nuitireni i nga ra katoa o te tau." That is. "Greetings! greetings! Thee, Victoria, be greeted, Queen of New Zealand, mother of the people of the Maori. Great is our joy to see thee, Queen of New Zealand. The glorious name of Your Majesty is known in all lands and in all parts of the world. The islands of the South Sea know the brightness of thy royal name." THE COLORATION OF THE CAT. THE coloration and markings of the domestic cat, as might be expected from its mixed origin, vary exceedingly. The wild Felidae, which range in size from that of the lion and tiger down to the pretty rusty-colored or rubiginons cat of India, which is only some sixteen inches in length, excluding the tail, vary very much in color, and also in the disposition of the marks, not only in the different animals, but also in the same species. So much is this the case that no less than four or five supposed species have been made out of one-namely, the American ocelot; and the leopard and panther, though regarded by most naturalists as mere varieties of the same species, are popularly regarded as being distinct. As such variations take place in well-defined species, it is not surprising that they should occur in the mixed progeny of the smaller race which constitutes our domestic variety. Thus we have the tawny-color of the lion in the small Siamese domestic cat; the stripes of the tiger are reproduced in many tabbies, these stripes breaking up as they do more or less perfectly into spots, not only in many wild species, but also in those cats that are shown as spotted tabbies at our cat-shows. The little rubiginous cat, which has repeatedly interbred with the domestic cat of India is an example of a spotted wild cat of small size. The markings of the clouded tiger, Felidae macrocelis, are reproduced in many of our varieties. The black variety of leopard, which occurs wild, has its analogue in our black cats, and some of the wild cats occupying the snow-covered mountains of India are almost white. From the vagrant and nocturnal habits of cats, there is more difficulty in breeding them true to any particular color and marking than occurs in the case of most other domestic animals; but, nevertheless, much has been done in determining the transmission of colors, and some exceedingly interesting facts have been ascertained. The true tortoiseshell, as distinguished from the tortoiseshelland-white, occurs only in the female-excepting in very rare instances; on the contrary, the red or sandy tabby marking, which is common in the male, is rare in the female. In fact, the sandy tabby male may be regarded as the mate of the tortoiseshell female; by due care, however, both of these markings can be produced in the two sexes. In what is called the tortoiseshell-and-white, which occurs frequently in both sexes, the sandy-and-black are not mixed together, as occurs in the pure tortoiseshell, but separated into large patches of pure color. In some pied cats there is a tendency to a symmetrical arrangement of colors; this is most noticeable in the black-andwhite. Another singular mixture of colors, which may be noticed occasionally, is the combination of gray tabby, red tabby, and white, the last being irregularly and variously distributed. The long hair of the Angora breed is analogous to the natural variation sometimes occurring in wild species, as the woolly cheetah from South Africa, and the longhaired tigers of the north of Asia. |