idle race, passing more than half their time squatting or lying muffled up to the mouth in blankets or mats, smoking, talking, singing psalms, and sleeping. Since the whites have come in greater numbers, they have grown more idle, and tenfold more extortionate for whatever they do. The Kowry timber, which covers large tracts of mountains is now very dear and unavailable, because the Mowries will not carry it out to water carriage at a remunerating price."

Yet these are the men who have had protectors appointed with large salaries. Why, it would have been a more sensible act on the part of our distinguished friend Lord John Russell, had he appointed some of them as protectors to the British, as, poor creatures, they seem to stand much in need of it; and better protectors than the New Zealanders, I for one would not desire.

I shall now give you a few of the more peculiar characteristics of that singular people, and, though my opinion of them is not so favourable as that of many others, yet I am inclined to think that the character given of them by the Rev. J. Butler, in a letter dated Kerikeri, 10th October, 1821, and quoted in the Report of the House of Lords in 1838, is not altogether applicable to them at the present day; Mr. Butler says, "New Zealand is covered with fern, weeds, brush, and woods; and the natives are covered with lice and filth to the last degree; and withal a proud, savage, obstinate, and cruel race of cannibals."

The "tapu" or tabboo is a ceremony common to New Zealand, along with all the other South Sea Islands. The power of " tapuing" seems to be vested in the principal chief alone, and may be considered the most important bulwark of his authority. This ceremony

renders every object, either animate or inanimate, sacred, or not to be approached, so that no person can enter tapued ground, nor touch a tapued person. Every girl promised in marriage is tapued, and married women also, until chastised by their husbands, when the "tapu" ceases, and they are then free to any one who can catch them, a remarkably good plan for securing the affections of the husband, and relieving the sex from some of those periodical chastisements in which some of the husbands in this country are so apt to indulge. Favourite pigs, canoes, and muskets are sometimes tabooed; burial ground is always tabbooed, and so is also a chief's head. A person who has touched a dead body is tapued for a certain time. Had I remained in the colony I meant to have asked them to "tapu" me, as then no one could have touched me. The only inconvenience I should have felt would have been, that I would not have been allowed to touch food or drink, but would have had to be fed by others till the tapu was taken off. Desecration of the "tapu" was, at one time, punished with death, though that punishment is not now inflicted. Nayti, the New Zealand chief, says, in his examination before the House of Lords, that if a New Zealander goes into tabbooed ground, the man to whom it belongs goes and takes his pigs and every thing belonging to him. Nayti also states, that at one time they used to fight every moon, and burned ships when they first saw them, as they could not possibly understand what they were.

But the cannibal propensities of the natives is, perhaps, the most distinguishing feature of their character, and hence that country was long known under the title of the Cannibal Islands. It was chiefly the pri

soners taken in battle who were devoured, and those whom they did not kill were made slaves of, though when they took the head chiefs of their enemies they generally put them to death, a practice adopted with the English chiefs at the Wairoa massacre. It was

only certain parts of the body that they partook of, and two of Captain Cook's officers, who tasted a morsel of it, which was handed to them by a New Zealander, found that its flavour was not unlike that of pork. Several British residents whom I met with in New Zealand, and who had tasted it also, agree in this opinion. They generally devoured those also whom they slew in revenge; the tragic fate of the crew of the Boyd, was a striking example of this. That vessel was chartered in Sydney, to convey spars from Wangaroa, in New Zealand, about twenty-six miles to the northward of the Bay of Islands, and land them at the Cape of Good Hope. She sailed about the latter end of 1809, and soon after leaving Sydney, the cook, having accidentally thrown overboard, in a bucket of water, a dozen of pewter spoons, and, apprehensive of being punished for his negligence, told the captain that they had been stolen by George, a young New Zealand chief, who was on board, returning to his own country. The captain, without sufficient investigation into the affair, directed the boatswain to punish him, and, though George protested that he was innocent, and as a chief ought not to be degraded in such a manner, the captain was inexorable, and, as the boatswain was a powerful man, George suffered severely, his back being much lacerated.

When George landed at Wangaroa, amongst his subjects in New Zealand, (the Nga-pui tribe,) and

showed them his back, they were roused to the highest pitch of indignation, and vowed revenge.

The captain, never suspecting any treachery, engaged George and his tribe to accompany him and his party, consisting of nearly all the ship's crew, to the spar forest, about ten miles up the river, and when arrived at one of the thickest recesses, and, when the men were scattered here and there amongst the natives, George threw off his New Zealand cloak, which had been arranged as the signal for a general massacre, and pointing to his wounds, said, "Captain Thomson, see how you have served my back." He had scarcely uttered these words when his brother dashed out the captain's brains, and in a moment, before the least opposition could be offered, every European was laid dead on the spot. George and his party then hastened to the ship, where they massacred the few who had been left to guard her, sparing only Mrs. Marley, wife of a publican in Sydney, with her child; Miss Broughton, daughter of the acting commissary general at Port Jackson, and the cabin boy, who had behaved with much kindness to the New Zealand chief during the voyage.

Thus, by the lie which the cook told, seventy British subjects were killed, roasted, and devoured, and property lost to the amount of £30,000, the ship having taken fire the day after the massacre, owing to some powder having accidentally ignited, through the ignorance and negligence of one of the natives, by which several of them were killed, and the ship completely destroyed.

The Rev. Mr. Wilkinson states, that they ate a women when he was there; and at the dreadful fight that took place in 1836, betwixt the tribes of Makatu

and Tamu, when 400 were killed, Mr. Knight mentions, that he came accidentally on the field of battle, and saw bodies which had been newly killed, besides halves and quarters of bodies, legs, and hands, lying in every direction. The Rev. A. N. Brown, writes thus on 25th August, 1836,-"We visited to-day, the site of the mission station, and the spot where the battle was fought,-sticks, and native weapons, were placed about in different directions, denoting where the natives who were shot fell. We then went to the spot where Waharoa's party lay encamped, and where, for two days after the battle, they remained to gorge on sixty human bodies. The sight is even now horrifying;-human bones of all kinds are spread about, many of them evidently broken for the purpose of extracting the marrow, and all of them picked as clean as they could have been by the wolf or the vulture." Mr. Leigh, a Wesleyan Missionary, who was sent from New South Wales, to New Zealand, in 1819, mentions having come to a place where they were roasting a lad about fourteen. The cook held him up by the feet, to allow Mr. Leigh to look at him, but he was not enough done at that time.

The first introduction of fire-arms into that country, occasioned dreadful scenes of massacres and cruelty. The great chief Shungee, by some called E-ongi, “the Scourge of New Zealand," was the person who may be said to have first introduced them. This chief paid a visit to England, and was very courteously received by George the Fourth, who among other things, gave him a great quantity of arms and ammunition. On leaving England, he sailed to New South Wales, and the Governor of that country made him a present of a number of cows, and other articles. These