is hanging up in the cabin. He takes it down and examines it closely. He is a good judge of a gun. It is the best tupara he has ever seen, and his speculations run something very like this:—"A good gun, a first-rate gun; I must have this; I must tapu it before I leave the ship:—[here he pulls a piece of the fringe from his cloak and ties it round the stock of the gun, thereby rendering it impossible for me to sell, give away, or dispose of it in any way to any one but himself]—I wonder what the pakeha will want for it? I will promise him as much flax or as many pigs as ever he likes for it. True, I have no flax just now, and am short of pigs, they were almost all killed at the last hahunga; but if he is in a hurry he can buy the flax or pigs from the people, which ought to satisfy him. Perhaps he would take a piece of land!—that would be famous. I would give him a piece quite close to the kainga, where I would always have him close to me. I hope he may take the land; then I should have two pakehas, him and——. All the inland chiefs would envy me. This—— is getting too knowing; he has taken to hiding his best goods of late, and selling them before I knew he had them. It's just the same as thieving, and I won't stand it. He sold three muskets the other day to the Ngatiwaki, and I did not know he had them, or I should have taken them. I could have paid for them some time or another. It was wrong, wrong, very wrong, to let that tribe have those muskets. He is not their pakeha; let them look for a pakeha for themselves. Those Ngatiwaki are getting too many muskets—those three make sixty-four they have got, besides two tupara. Certainly we have a great many more, and the Ngatiwaki are our relations; but then there was Kohu, we killed, and Patu, we stole his wife. There is no saying what these Ngatiwaki may do if they should get plenty of muskets; they are game enough for anything. It was wrong to give them those muskets; wrong, wrong, wrong!" After experience enabled me to tell just what the chief's soliloquy was, as above.
But all this time the boat is darting to the shore; and as the distance is only a couple of hundred yards, I can hardly understand how it is that I have not yet landed. The crew are pulling like mad, being impatient to show the tribe the prize they have made—a regular pakeha rangatira as well as a rangatira pakeha (two very different things), who has lots of tomahawks, and fish-hooks, and blankets, and a tupara, and is even suspected to be the owner of a great many "pots" of gunpowder! "He is going to stop with the tribe, he is going to trade, he is going to be a pakeha for us." These last conclusions were, however, jumped at; the "pakeha" not having then any notions of trade or commerce, and being only inclined to look about and amuse himself.
The boat nears the shore, and now arises from a hundred voices the call of welcome—"Haere mai! haere mai! hoe mai! hoe mai! haere mai, e-te-pa-ke-ha, haere mai!" Mats, hands, and certain ragged petticoats put into requisition for that occasion, all at the same time waving in the air in sign of welcome. Then a pause. Then, as the boat came nearer, another burst of haere mai! But unaccustomed as I was then to the Maori salute, I disliked the sound. There was a wailing melancholy cadence that did not strike me as being the appropriate tone of welcome; and as I was quite ignorant up to this time of my own importance, wealth, and general value as a pakeha, I began, as the boat closed in with the shore, to ask myself whether possibly this same "haere mai" might not be the Maori for "dilly, dilly, come and be killed." There was, however, no help for it now; we were close to the shore, and so, putting on the most unconcerned countenance possible, I prepared to make my entrée into Maori land in a proper and dignified manner.
CHAPTER II.
The Market Price of a Pakeha. — The Value of a Pakeha "as such."—Maori Hospitality in the Good Old Times. — A respectable Friend. — Maori Mermaids. — My Notions of the Value of Gold. — How I got on Shore.
Here I must remark that in those days the value of a pakeha to a tribe was enormous. For want of pakehas to trade with, and from whom to procure gunpowder and muskets, many tribes or sections of tribes were about this time exterminated, or nearly so, by their more fortunate neighbours who got pakehas before them, and who consequently became armed with muskets first. A pakeha trader was therefore of a value say about twenty times his own weight in muskets. This, according to my notes made at the time, I find to have represented a value in New Zealand something about what we mean in England when we talk of the sum total of the national debt. A book-keeper, or a second-rate pakeha, not a trader, might be valued at, say, his weight in tomahawks; an enormous sum also. The poorest labouring pakeha, though he might have no property, would earn something—his value to the chief and tribe with whom he lived might be estimated at, say, his weight in fish-hooks, or about a hundred thousand pounds or so: value estimated by eagerness to obtain the article.
The value of a musket was not to be estimated to a native by just what he gave for it: he gave all he had, or could procure, and had he ten times as much to give, he would have given it, if necessary; or if not, he would buy ten muskets instead of one. Muskets! muskets! muskets! nothing but muskets, was the first demand of the Maori: muskets and gunpowder, at any cost.
I do not, however, mean to affirm that pakehas were at this time valued "as such,"—like Mr. Pickwick's silk stockings, which were very good and valuable stockings, "as stockings;" not at all. A loose straggling pakeha—a runaway from a ship for instance, who had nothing, and was never likely to have anything—a vagrant straggler passing from place to place—was not of much account, even in those times. Two men of this description (runaway sailors) were hospitably entertained one night by a chief, a very particular friend of mine, who, to pay himself for his trouble and outlay, ate one of them next morning.
Remember, my good reader, I don't deal in fiction; my friend ate the pakeha sure enough, and killed him before he ate him: which was civil, for it was not always done. But then, certainly, the pakeha was a tutua, a nobody, a fellow not worth a spike-nail; no one knew him; he had no relations, no goods, no expectations, no anything: what could be made of him? Of what use on earth was he except to eat? And, indeed, not much good even for that—they say he was not good meat. But good well-to-do pakehas, traders, ship-captains, labourers, or employers of labour, these were to be honoured, cherished, caressed, protected—and plucked: plucked judiciously (the Maori is a clever fellow in his way), so that the feathers might grow again. But as for poor, mean, mere Pakeha tutua, e aha te pai?
Before going any farther I beg to state that I hope the English reader or the new-comer, who does not understand Maori morality—especially of the glorious old time—will not form a bad opinion of my friend's character, merely because he ate a good-for-nothing sort of pakeha, who really was good for nothing else. People from the old countries I have often observed to have a kind of over-delicacy about them, the result of a too effeminate course of life and over-civilization; which is the cause that, often starting from premises which are true enough, they will, being carried away by their over-sensitive constitution or sickly nervous system, jump at once, without any just process of reasoning, to the most erroneous conclusions. I know as well as can be that some of this description of my readers will at once, without reflection, set my friend down as a very rude ill-mannered sort of person. Nothing of the kind, I assure you. You never made a greater mistake in your life. My friend was a highly respectable person in his way; he was a great friend and protector of rich, well-to-do pakehas; he was, moreover, a great warrior, and had killed the first man in several different battles. He always wore, hanging round his neck, a handsome carved flute (this at least showed a soft and musical turn of mind), which was made of the thigh-bone of one of his enemies; and when Heke, the Ngapuhi, made war against us, my friend came to the rescue, fought manfully for his pakeha friends, and was desperately wounded in so doing. Now can any one imagine a more respectable character?—a warrior, a musician, a friend in need, who would stand by you while he had a leg to stand on, and would not eat a friend on any account whatever—except he should be very hungry.
The boat darts on; she touches the edge of a steep rock; the "haere mai" has subsided; six or seven "personages"—the magnates of the tribe—come gravely
