markable how much cowardice lurks in a temperament which blazes up into rage and madness in actual conflict. Habitual suspicion and alarm are betrayed on all sides. In the course of an exploring journey, our author was amused at the evident terror of his band of stout young chieftains, on occasion of the sudden appearance, or reported approach, of some two or three strange men, till they were recognized as of a tribe not hostile. Even when such heroes are confronted in battle array, they are shy of commencing the fray, till some provocation fires their blood into reckless fury. The explosive suddenness of anger was often shown in the ordinary affairs of life. At some trifle of offence they would leap up, and caper, and rage about in frantic violence, with frightful gesticulations and grimaces. The Englishman would laugh at them, and by some adroit turn speedily reduce this outbreak to quietness or even good humour. Their fickleness and caprice were often an annoyance to him when he had to depend on their co-operation. His management was sometimes by humouring and bribing them, and sometimes by assuming the resolute tone of a master.

We have mentioned their affection for their relations. Parents show a doating fondness for their childen, who do whatever they like without fear of chastisement; and of course are often impertinent and insolent in return. Meetings after absence make what we are in the fashion of denominating a scene.

'One of the females who had accompanied us met with her father: whom she no sooner beheld, not having expected to see him in this village, than she fell on his neck, and embraced him with such marks of filial piety and tenderness as prevented me from being an unmoved spectator. The parent, who was quite gray, and bowed down with old age, applied his nose to hers, large tear-drops rolling in quick succession down his aged face, which the duteous daughter wiped away with her mat, that was soon saturated with their united tears.'

-Vol. i. p. 117.

This was genuine, no doubt; and such was the warmth of parental affection in a man who would, very likely, have luxuriated in a feast on the roasted body of another parent's daughter, if obtained among the spoils of victory. Is it that in the savage, in the absence of all moral culture of the affections, the attachment of near relationship is therefore the stronger in the simple unmodified nature of an instinct, like that of the lower animals?

We wonder whether there be a philosophy that can assign the principle from which human beings should, equally on joyous and mournful occasions, affect a violent sorrow, and inflict on themselves frightful wounds, as in the ceremony denominated tangi, at once the most ludicrous and the most serious etiquette we have

ever read of. On a meeting, from a distance, of parties who are friends, or whose policy it is to appear so, they burst out into loud wailings, and lacerate their own flesh with the muscle-shell, till they stream with blood, to the dismay of an European spectaOn the arrival of the author's party at the village of a chief who gave them a friendly reception,

tor.

The abomination of the tangi commenced, in which the early sobs rose to shrieks and outcries that were truly dismal to hear; it reminded me of those unhappy people whose prostrate imagination conceives no hope. This howling lasted an hour; and as we had passed through many adventures (in the ideas of a native), it took some time to chant over. The women, as usual, were most outrageous in the lament; and cut gashes in their flesh with such ferocity, that I was fain glad to quit their vicinity, and visit the lions' of this metropolis." -Vol. i. p. 164.

The reader may ask what curiosities, worthy of the cant denomination of lions,' there could be in the barbarian chief's headquarters? He will find them such objects as were formerly, and not so very long since, deemed not unfit for the neighbourhood of palaces, churches, and cathedrals. It should be in moderate terms that we express our censure on the court of New Zealand for retaining a fashion somewhat later than it went out' in London.

"I was introduced to that part of the inclosure, where the heads of the enemy that had been captured during the week were placed on poles, in front of the house of the chief. I counted nine: there were three more placed on poles in front of the entrance gate to this part of the village, behind which was the cemetery. The latter heads had been in that situation for a month previous. They brought to recollection the refined taste that prompted a more civilized people to decorate the gates of their metropolis, the emporium of the fine arts, with ornaments of a similar nature, some 'sixty years since;' the discontinuance of which has been destructive to an itinerant profession; for we are told by Walpole, in his Private Correspondence,' that at a certain date he went to the Tower of London, and passed under the new heads at Temple Bar, where he saw people making a trade by letting spy-glasses at a halfpenny a look."-Vol. i. p. 156.

Go a little further, however, in the story, and we disown the parallel, in behalf even of the druidical age of our nation; but must reconcile ourselves as well as we can to the fact of our standing in the relationship of humanity with whatever is the most degraded portion of it. The declaration that 'of one blood are made all nations, to dwell on all the face of the earth,' brings something of rebuke and humiliation to the pride of civilization and refinement, when we read of a section of our general kindred

6

having at this day such a taste and notion of luxury as that exhibited in the paragraph immediately following that just transcribed.

These heads had chanted the war-song but four days previously; the bodies which had appertained to them danced the wild hākā, and had since been consigned to the oven, and nearly wholly devoured by the natives. Curious to see this abhorrent food, after it had undergone a culinary process, I requested a minor chief to show me some. He accordingly mounted a wátá, where the provisions are always kept, and brought down a small flax basket, containing the human viand. At first view I should have taken it for fresh pork in a boiled state, having the same pale cadaverous colour. My informant stated it was a piece of the lower part of the thigh, grasping with his hand that part of my body, illustrative of what he advanced. It appeared very much shrunk; and on my observing it must have appertained to a boy, the head of its possessor when alive, was pointed out to me, apparently a man of forty-five years of age.

The sight of this piece of mortality afforded the chief some pleasure; for he stretched out his tongue, pretending to lick the food, and gave other significant signs, indicative of the excessive delight he felt in partaking of human flesh. He entered largely on the subject, pointing to many parts of my body, such as the palm of my hand, shoulders, and lower extremities, as being particularly delicate, even to the most fastidious.'—Vol. i. p. 167.

We wish we had been distinctly told that the women stand aloof from such abominations. In other respects our author has much to say in their favour. Here, as every where else, the allpervading depravity of the human race has a mitigation of its virulence in the female sex. There are in the work repeated strong testimonies to a degree of modesty, in the young females especially, which, amidst such habits and spectacles as they are accustomed to witness, could have been preserved only by an innate principle. Such of them as become the wives of Europeans, especially if they have been under the tuition, or become the converts, of the missionaries, accommodate themselves with admirable facility to the dress, good order, and all the decorums of civilized life. In the savage state they are remarkable for a devoted attachment to their husbands, much greater than, we dare say, any of those husbands deserve. It appears to be no uncommon occurrence for a wife to destroy herself on the death of her husband; and that not in servility to any dictate of superstition, as among the Hindoos, but from the impulse of genuine and desolate affection. It happened several times to Mr. P. to witness the funeral rites for such a self-immolated widow. The women share the common lot of their sex among all barbarous nations in

being undervalued and doomed to all the hardship in the economy of life.

The aristocratic principle has found its way (for it inheres in human nature) to this far-off fragment of the earth, where ancient patricians and modern peerage had never been heard of. But here it is remarkable, that the thing is not a contrivance for exemption from being useful; for the chiefs work in the plantations, gardens, and manual employments, as hard as, and along with, the commonalty and serfs. How such an anomaly can have happened is rather wonderful. Is it that they have been less arrogant than their 'order' elsewhere, on the strength of rank, or that the plebeians have been able and had the sense to keep them down? It is not that little value is set on noble descent; it affects materially the regulations of society, especially in the affair of marriage. If we recollect right, a chief may take a wife of inferior condition without damage to his station; but when a lady of quality accepts a man of the lower order she raises him, indeed, but in the same degree herself descends. The son of such a marriage appears to inherit the mother's original rank, for with all freedom of speech and manner, he will remind his father that he is of finer quality. Though the chieftain rank is principally by descent, a man who is natively 'nobody,' may attain it by distinguished military exploits. There is a slave-class, consisting chiefly of captives and their descendants. Numerous runaways of this class have collected themselves into a sort of tribe, in an out-of-the-way district, to which the debasement peculiarly incident to their condition has accompanied their liberty.

Hideously savage and repulsive as the character of these islanders stands out in our author's representation, verified by numerous narratives and anecdotes, he is, nevertheless, confidently sanguine as to what they may come to be at no distant time. He is strong in the opinion of both their capability of a renovated condition, and their aptitude for it. They are far from that lumpish impregnable grossness which fixes down, as by a law of gravitation, the state of some of the outcasts of humanity, to remain the same from generation to generation. They are naturally intelligent, inquisitive, observant, of ready apprehension, and flexible temper. They are quick to perceive the advantage of European arts, implements, and modes of operation, which they have a facility in imitating and adopting. Their spirit of traffic, knavish and thievish, no doubt, and specially intent on obtaining the means of effective warfare, will gradually conduce, by their trade with Europeans, to a multiplication of their wants and tastes, and tend to transfer their passion for guns and powder to objects more akin to peace and civilization. Their present care and neatness in the cultivation of their garden-grounds, afford some assurance

they can be industrious. The vast nuisance of their superstition is not, we think, of a nature the most difficult to be abated. It is of a coarse consistence by what we may call its poverty of dogmas. It exists in one rude fallacy of the imagination, instead of being radicated in intellectual and abstract principles; it cannot, therefore, have any thing like the tenacity of the Asiatic paganisms, with their systematic order of speculative doctrines, to be complicated with and pervert all thinking on all subjects. It is a superstition which, when begun to be thrown off, may soon be wholly thrown off; since, though it does, as we have before observed, maintain a comprehensive tyranny over the people's feelings and actions, it is by one bare tangible form of delusion that it does so. A few notorious instances of evident impunity in defying and scorning the atuas and their priests, will do much toward a riddance of the imposition and the bondage; as in the case of the heroic native female in the Sandwich Islands, who descended, alone, in the sight of an anxious multitude halting between two opinions,' into the great volcano, to challenge with insult the dreaded god of fire in his own domain, on the very edge of his glowing lava. The emancipation will be assisted by the conviction, acknowledged by these pagans, of the superior power of the Englishmen's God, who makes them invulnerable to the power and malice of theirs. All power sinks in estimation when seen in the presence and in awe of a greater power.

Already considerable numbers of English have found their way into these fine islands; some to be located, many to traverse, trade, or play the villain, among the natives. The consequence is a balance of good and evil, with a very decided tendency to a predominance of the latter; a certainty that it will and must predominate, unless prompt measures be adopted by this country to prevent it. Our author asserts pointedly and repeatedly, that the character of the natives, especially of the females, has become much vitiated (vitiated from that of the savage state!) by communication with the English. The country is becoming infested with deserters from ships, and miscreants escaped from the convict colony. These are fast creating a pestilent compost of the vices of civilization, preposterously so called, with indigenous ones of the savages. Some of the masters and crews of trading ships have committed the most abominable iniquities. Mr. P. relates (vol. ii. p. 113) a piece of infernal treachery and cruelty perpetrated by the captain of a ship from Port Jackson, of the name of Stewart. Information was sent to the authorities at Sydney; there was some semblance of a process about it; but it was thought proper to let him go off from that port with impunity, in the same vessel in which the horrid transaction had taken place.

It is but little that, on the wide scale, the mischiefs done by the