Taranaki, the region where the Maori, all over the length and breadth of the islands of New Zealand, at one time specially lauded—loved to sing of its beauty and its fertility, its pure air and healthy clime, its sweet potatoes and succulent kumeras—had, it is said, solely from enviousness of these excellencies, twenty-thousand of the backbone of its inhabitants put to death, between the years 1818 and 1832, by the Ngatimanapota, of Waikato, in their frequent murderous raids in the south. The fertile imagination of even a Dante, in depicting grim and ghastly horror, would scarcely suffice to draw a sufficiently accurate sketch of the hellish atrocities perpetrated upon her people within these dates. Such unparalled carnage, converted into nothing more than an unpopulated waste this exceedingly fair land. Sometimes its people entombed alive in fulsome caves, under Mount Egmont, whereto they had fled for safety; seeking for security in perpetual and unutterable darkness, with the hounding hoardes at their heels, ready to bar their exit therefrom. Sometimes, also, seeking the “pale rider”—shorn of protracted horror—by closing with the billows of the Pacific Ocean: sometimes, again, by throwing themselves headlong off the summit of those crags, which cast their shadows on the black metallic beach. Mercy! No such thing as that ever had part in the contemplations of these most heartless forayers. They were absolutely obdurate to compunctior, or to pity, in its faintest form. The only immunity from their atrocious devilry lay in woman's charms. Such drew forth their gloated regard: such fired their sensual appetite; and such, alone, were spared to administer to their pruriency: similarly, though, as were the ancient Romans in their occupation of Britain, those vampires were occasionally called away north of the Mo au River, to assist in putting down internecine brawls; but, most unfortunately, again, came back south to Taranaki, the moment that these were settled. No unfrequent incident it was for a kianga [village] containing several hundred inhabitants to be, in one day—yea, in one single hour! almost totally destroyed, and the gory heads of all, save those reserved for the vanquishers' sanguine infamy, stuck up on every prominent position around, as trophies of their unsparing and much-vaunted of and unrivalled prowess. No uncommon thing it was either, for days following these carnages, for the rapacious canibals to feast, to surfeiting point on the pulp of their miserable victims—ay! and the sound of the war-song raised, and danced-to, by those fiendish gourmands! brandishing the reeking joints, of human structure, in their unclean hands. No; nor was it at all unusual, in this most terrible epoch, for weeks following these wholesale massacres, to see these ghouls lying unconscious, like heaps of offal, pinned to the earth, with the load of their disgusting aliment—or, otherwise, with the overpowering tutu-berry wine. Why, all the enemies which they had had anticipated danger from, were not they by this time stowed away in their own flanks? Then, wherefore not reap the benefit of their prowess by the proclivity they had for gross and beastly indulgences? When the scarcity of provisions again brought on hunger—then, and not till then, was the time to gather their energies together, and scour the country round in search of further prey! People nurtured under other conditions, surveying from a different aspect, naturally should think that a life of alternate fighting, as has been here represented, and surfeiting, was anything but an enviable one. But such was almost the only enjoyment at this time this earth afforded them. Did not the bulk of their conversation lead up to their swaggering over the numbers they had swept from life? The torture which they had inflicted? The gorgeous feasts in which their own butchery had contributed to; and the fascinating slaves their victories had won—which were constantly at their puissant pleasure?

These were the feats which win them name and fame; and are not such objects as name and fame—the attainment thereof—all over this planet, civilised or uncivilised, things which man will do and dare for? The Maori, as far back as is known of them, had an established code of morality, accentuated by Tapu; but, by all accounts, it bore a very slight likeness, by way of tenacity, to that of the ancient Medes. This more modern code with the Maori, was most ludicrously elastic: it yielded obviously to the pressure of concocted subterfuge and equivocation; and the Maori, be it told, is an adept in the framing of modifications. He is possessed of strong roligious scruples; but quite a m sterhand he is at clothing the transgressions of any of them with colourable quirks, so as to prevent their telling against him.

The following story has been told illustrative of the foregoing. A small party of Europeans one day came to the margin of a river, which they badly wanted to cross, but proved it to be too swollen to permit of their fording it. They accidentally perceived at some distance up the stream, a canoe, tied with a flax rope, fore and aft, on to stakes, on a small sandspit. Such was the eagerness of this party to get at the opposite bank, that they were about illegally to appropriate the canoe for that purpose, when, unexpectedly, a Native made his appearance on the scene—menacingly forbidding them to lay hands on the canoe. Thinking, among themselves, that it was merely a case of black-mail, they offered what was considered as a tempting sum to the Native to paddle them across. But the guardian of the canoe, at this overture, merely regarded them with grave perplexity—hitched his shoulders. After a little they were told by him that the boat was tapued [sacred] and, therefore, could not be released. They were about to proceed disappointedly in the direction from which they had come, when the Native “Coo-eed” them back, acquainting them that he had just thought of a plan that would not interfere with the tapu. He went away for a minute or two, and brought back a shovel, and at once commenced most vigorously to undermine the spit, and soon the boat, stakes aand all, were liberated by the scour of the river. “All right, now, Pakeha,” gleefully exclaimed the Native. “The Te Atu [the gods] do the work of unfixing the canoe, and no blame now to anybody.”

Moturoa, or Ngamotu, each close together at the Sugar Loaves—where this Mr. George Shaw, in the opening chapter, visited—and near to where now is erected the New Plymouth Breakwater, through some reason not clearly defined, for several years previous to 1831, seemed to enjoy an enviable immunity from the ravages of the Waikato. It possibly may have been that there were, for many years ere this time, a considerable whaling station therein established, with lots of Europeans always about. The cause of their keeping away may also be reasonably conjectured as arising from the peculiar situation of the place. There were always a strong fleet of canoes, ready to take the Natives, in occupation of Moturoa or Ngamotu, out to the seaward Sugar Loaves. At this time the bustle about Moturoa was much more, than now is, generally considered that there ever were there. Why, there were but very few weeks in the year round, without one or two Sydney traders paying it a visit. To have seen the smoke from the fires under boiling cauldrons, curling up to the heavens: the echoes of tools dressing spars: the rattling reverberations of coopering casks: and the lighter-boats plying from the beach to the offing, one should have taken it to be quite a marvel, in its way, of teeming, active life!

There were no Church established: no Judicial Bench; no Licensed Victuallers: still, for all that, there were, with both races, a sort of tacit regard for morality, law, and order. Did not, at this time, “Bill the Preacher,” daily, and sometimes oftener even than that, hold forth? Did not Mr. Richard Barrett, a grand type of a good old English yeoman stock, when among them, quite unknown to himself, act in a “judicial” capacity? Bill the Preacher, of a Puritanical school, with his sine quo non of perpetual torture in lakes of brimstone, if they did not acquit themselves with propriety, was, without demur, a very great restrainer of excess. Nobody, now does, or can, fully appreciate the civilising influence of these rough and unpretentious whalers among the Maori race. Their deeds are forgot, for this sufficient reason, that there were none to record them.

It augured well, in those days, the concord and good feeling which existed between the brown and white skins. How they heartily commingled, teaching to each other their respective oral lexicons, until, in process of time, they succeeded, to a marvel, in acquiring what was then termed “whalers' mixed jargon.” No: nor was it surprising either that, the fame of the sociability which, happily, existed at this Whalers' Station, should have spread over a very wide area. Shipmasters at Sydney indeed had not the least difficulty in getting up a crew when it became known that their vessel was bound for Moturoa, New Zealand. Nor was it at all an infrequent thing for the adventurous sons of owners, through a freakish bout, beseech their paterfamilias for a passage thither. There was, in short, no place all throughout the purlieus of Sydney for several years more popularly spoken of than the Sugar Loaves, on the West Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. For, at the said place, there certainly was unstinted hospitality, agreeable intercourse, usually abundance of food—and grog—why, anything but inaccessible. Moreover, lots of lively-eyed women, with a particularly ungovernable prediliction for the Pakcha.

Albeit this goodly habitation of Te Puki, the chief, had been for years undisturbed by aggressive aliens. The old man had, nevertheless, most deeply suffered by the loss of many near kith and kin elsewhere. A daughter, who had been paying a visit to one of her relations in the north, most unfortunately, during an incursion of the Waikato to the village this relation lived in, was made a prisoner, and led into captivity, leaving Te Puki, at Moturoa, with but one child, a girl of fourteen years of age, at the time of the aforesaid cruel bereavement. This girl, spared to him, and named Rawhenia, consequently became to the afflicted father, as the phrase has it, “as dear as the apple of his eye.” Rawhenia was a girl liberally gifted with many sterling qualities, both of body and mind. She had a pleasing, statuesque-looking beauty, such as imagination might attribute to a Boadicea or an Eleanor! Also an acuteness of perception far beyond what could be reasonably imagined, considering the straitened area she had for acquiring any general knowledge. At this stage in the progress of this story, Rawhenia happens to be absent, on a protracted visit to a relation in the neighbourhood of Queen Charlotte's Sound. In truth, it has now been nearly two years since Te Puki set eyes upon his loveable daughter.

In order that the intellectually endowed reader may be better able to realize what has already been inferred about the gratifying unity which existed at this particular place and epoch between the two shades of epidermis, allow themselves for a brief interval to idealise a large shed, say, a little after a winter day's sunset, when supper is supposed to have been partaken of—when that relaxation which generally precedes rest all the world over, gives comfort to mankind—which seems to be a yearning instinctively implanted by nature to seek as a wholesome preparative for sleep. This shed referred to, is a low, oblong building, sixty by twenty ffeet, constructed almost entirely of wattles and reeds, with an open and very low-pitched roof: a passage up the centre thereof, on each side of which groups are lying or squattinng, of meagrely-vested humankind. A fire of logs: in all conscience, ample enough for sacrificial rites, flames steadily in the middle of the passage. In addition, a luminary is here and there supplemented, by whale-oil burning in ironpots, supplied with boughs of flax as wicks! Therein, however, despite the flames, every object, animate or inanimate, seems enshrouded by pungent smoke, of greater density by far than even a London fog, with no other outlet to the ether than by what is supplied by the crevices in the low roof. Generally, whalers drop in at the aforementioned time, to wile away an interval, ere retiring.

One of the groups spoken of may show the individuals composing it turning dice, entirely of home manufacture—“our own make,” as it were. Another, at a crudely improvised wheel-of-fortune, and two more groups at uncleanly daubed cards, the groundwork of which looks as though they consisted of old boot-linings, inartistically smeared with native ochre, to represent the various figures. But, never mind! dingy, and also inartistic as arc those playing cards, the players, evidently receive quite as much gratification from them as they would, perhaps, from one of the best packs obtainable away in more pretentious quarters.

Here, nearest to the door, please observe! squats a young girl, who, for the nonce, may be designated Hena. A swarthy buxom lass is Hena, sans doute, with wicked-like furtive dark eyes, and ebony-shaded rolling locks irregularly sweeping down her broad-set shoulders and back—with winning smiles and amusing gesticulations—trying to rehearse a task in prosody, which Jack Wright, one of the whalers, reclining lazily by her side, has submitted for her to get off by heart. Every time which Jack deems it fitting to correct Hena's pronunciation she manifests, in a diverting way, her contrition, by a sort of lugubrious smirk.

“Try it again, Hena, my girl,” requests Jack, with quite exemplary patience, gravely turning round a quid of pigtail in his mouth, and looking as erudite as “Domine Samson.”

“O! tee-el whati le mattah pe, Honi tay long ata fair.”

“Say the words, Hena,” says Jack, “as I say them—slow and distinct. Now, just you listen! ‘O—dear—what—can—the—matter be—Johnny—stays—long—at—the—fair.’”

“You make peaky to me to next words Ehak, then you see me go on all right,” entreated Hena, with a curtly-utterd obscenity.

And Jack Wright, her preceptor, proceeds: “He—promised—to—buy—me—a—bunch—of—blue—ribbon—to—tie—uup—my—bonnie—brown—hair.”

“O Ehak!” returned Hena, with a look of pleading concern: “Me no try all much this! Me make tupit plunder—then efry white-fello make the laff, and makey me purn all over check.”

“Your own way be 't,” says Jack, complacently. “You hand the pannikin this way then, and charge here this ‘cutty.’ I'll hear you at your lessons, Hena, somewhere where your blunders wont make you blush.”

“What does you odd sort o' people say for, ‘Can you sleep at night?’” yawningly asked Joe Grundy, for want of something more important to interlocute.

Joe was the old seaman mentioned in the introductory chapter. The brown moon-faced girl whom Joe's address was made to, cocked her one ear, saying.

“Aha te korero” [What do you say?]

But, after Joe again putting the interrogation, it is relegated by her unlettered ladyship to get elucidated by more tutored and comprehensive brains. These words, “Can you sleep at night?” thus becoming common property, were taken up, and repeated from mouth to mouth to mouth, glecfashion, all over the place, until they got to Horo Ito, who had at one time served fifteen months in a trader, and were by him construed, much to the edification of his compeers, into, “Ka moe koe i te po?” [Can you sleep at night?] And these words were articulated by all the Maoris, and, shortly after this query, which Grundy had carelessly put, it invaded no doubt many of their dreams!