The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1894-09-28
FAIR NEW ZEALAND.
A LAND WHERE MURDER ONCE WAS
RIFE A PARADISE TODAY.

DR.. Talmage Holds Up to View the Two
Pictures-Maoris Indulged In Murder as
Pastime-Their Battle Grounds Now
Beautiful Gardens and Magnificent Cities.
copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1884,
DUNEDIN, New Zealand, July 2s.-
What the Indians are to America the
Maoris are to New Zealand. These
aborigines are dying out very rapidly,
but you see them in all the upper por-
tions of New Zealand. All this country
was once theirs, and they would have
kept it, but from whaling ships tho
foreigners alighted to furnish enough
rum and vices of all sorts to kill the
Maoris. They are said to be superior
race Of savages, but the nobility of them
fail to see. Their faces are plowed up,
not with age, but by tattooing which
they suppose pictorializes and beautifies
Nharp shells scooped out these burrows
Of the countenance Their greatest fun
was massacre When some of them
adopted Christianity, they received the
Old Testament, but rejected the New
Testament. They liked the war scenes
OF the Old, but not the peace of the
New. On occasions they made cartridges
of the New Testament. When they
could not eat all their enemies, they
preserved them in tin cans and sent
them as delicate presents to their
friends. The ship Boyd, bound for Eng
land, put in at one of the New Zealand
harbors, and all on board were slain
and eaten except woman and three
children, who hid away, the only sur
vivors to tell the story.
Of course all ships knew that if they
were wrecked on these shores they
would become part Of the diet of tho
people Two of their chiefs taken to
London in 1890 aroused much interest,
and they were loaded with presents of
all sorts, but before starting for home
these recipients exchanged the presents
for muskets, with which they drove
back and destroyed the neighboring
tribes who could not afford muslets.
Some of these savages went SO far as to
lend clubs and powder and knives to
their enemies that lively fighting might
be kept up On one occasion they re
fused to capture the trains carrying food
and ammunition to the opposing forces,
and when the chief Of the Maoris was
asked the cause of this he replied,
"Why, you fool, if we had captured
their ammunition and food how could |
they have Fought" OpA Of the mission
aries says that he held a religious service
at a place between two fighting tribes,
and from both tribes the audience was
made up on Sunday, but on Monday |
they resumed their old fight. If they
had had plainly put to them the first
question of the cateohism, "What is
the chief end Of mani" their reply, if |
frankly made, would have been, ''Thc
chief end Of man is to make an end of |
him. /"
DE Quincy wrote an essay on "Mur
der as Fine Art, !" but to tho Maoris
murder was pastime Assassination
was for ages their gladdest recreation.
Massacre was their sport. 1t was to
them what the tennis court and croquet
ground and baseball are to many mod
erns No hunter ever enjoyed shooting
reedbirds or fetching down roebuck,
no fisherman better liked throwing fly
and Watching spotted trout rise and
snap it, than did these Maoris the
slaughter of man. Give beef or NUT
ton to others, but tho appetite of the
Maori wavted something human in the
bill of fare.
|
Many of the Maoris may be good and
kind and noble, but their ancestors
we're without nobility of nature unless
Iaziness and heartlessness and revenge
and malevolence benoble. What an ap-
petite they must have had for soup Of
human bones for white man ON toast
md for SPARE rib of missionary We
search New sycal..nd in vain frcm top of