Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1894-09-10
FAIR NEW ZEALAND.
A LAND WHERE MURDER ONCE WAS
RIFE A PARADISE TODAY

RIFE A PARADISE TODAY.
DIR. Ta1mage Holds Up to View the Two
Pictures-Maoris INDUCED In Murder as
Pastime-Their Battle Grounds Now
Beautiful Gardens and Magnificent Cities.
copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1S94.l
DUNEDIN, New Zealand, July 49,
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 the
foreigners alighted to furnish enough
rum and vices of all sorts to kill the
Maoris. They are said to be a superior
race of savages, but the nobility of them
fail to see. Their faces are plowed up,
not with age, but by a tattooing which
they suppose pictorializes and beauties
Sharp 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 fsr 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 the
people. Two of their chiefs taken to
London in 1920 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 muskets.
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?' One of the mission
aries says that he held religious service
at q place between two fighting tribes,
and from both tribes the audience was
made up OH Sunday, but on Monday
they resumed their old fight If they
had had plainly put to them the first
question of the catechism, "What is
the chief end of man?'' their reply, if
frankly made, would have been, 1.-The
chief end OF man is to mako an end Of
him. -
De Quincy wrote an essay on "Mur-
der as q Fine Art, - but to the Maoris
murder was q 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 |
ems. No hunter ever enjoyed shooting |
reedbirds or fetching down a roebuck,
no fisherman better liked throwing a fly |
and Watching a spotted trout rise and |
snap it, than did these Maoris the
slaughter Of a man. Give beef or NUT
ton to others, but the appetite of the |
Maori wanted something human in the
bill Of fare. !
Many Of the Maoris may be good and !
kind and noble, but their ancestors
were without nobility Ct nature unless
laziness and heartlessness and revenge
and malevolence be noble. What all ap-
petite they must have had for soup of
human bones, for white man on, toast
and for spare rib of missionary! We
search New Zealand in vain from top of
North island to foot of South island
to find among the Maoris anything more
noble than seen in the American Indian
seated by bride path Of the Rocky
wrapped in filthy blanket,
hair cOmbcd once in 40 years, waiting
for q cowboy to toss him a rusty cent.
These MaOriS were the impersOnatiOn of
cruelty and diabolism. 1t was to them
rare sport when they could take an en-
envy and scalp the skin from the bottom
of the feet-if you can apply to the
lower eXtremities the word usually APP
piled to the upper northumberland make
the victim walk on q rough place, and
the shrek Of pain would make those
noble sayages laugh till you could hear
them half mile away. Sometimes they
would, in order to have fresh meat, cut
the flesh from their victim just as they
needed it by nice tidbits and day after
lay. Back Of Osborne, New Zealand
to make a fine peroration Of their ac-
they killed all the men,
women and children SO that the authors
night not be charged with lack of thor
oughness.