Who, then, are the Maoris? They are a brown race, a race of seamen who came in their long double canoes from the islands to the north and settled along the neck of North Island--the Fish of Maui as they called it--and at Otago and some few other points in South Island. They brought with them their island customs, especially the division into families and clans which were always fighting among themselves. In New Zealand they found all the materials for their usual mode of existence: timber for their houses and sea-going canoes, native flax for the weaving of clothes, stones for their weapons, as they had no knowledge of metals; and fish everywhere in the rivers, lakes, and seas. So here they built their houses, with little patches of garden for their few vegetables, while the surrounding country was the common possession of the clan, whence they added roots, berries, and wild birds to the larder. Everywhere, in the best positions for defence, were dotted about their fortified enclosures, or 27 pahs, in which they took refuge in the numerous clan feuds. Their religion consisted of a kind of fetichism, and their whole life was subject to the principle of _tapu_, or taboo as we commonly spell it, a principle common over all this part of the Pacific, and among savage races elsewhere. The Maoris were chivalrous fighters, eloquent orators, and careful preservers of the traditions of their past history. Such was the race which, in the nineteenth century, contested the settlement of the island with us. Here is a portrait of a chief showing the method of tattooing 28 the face. Here again we see him with his _taiaha_, or staff of office: he looks civilised enough now; in fact, dressed as he 29 is, he might be mistaken for an Englishman, but doubtless he was very different in the old days. He is nearly ninety years old, and so must have seen the settlement and fighting almost from the very beginning. The building behind the group is a meeting house of the usual Maori shape, though the galvanised iron roof seems scarcely to agree with the elaborate ornamentation of the woodwork. Notice the curious scroll carving on the fetich pillars: it is a favourite design among the Maoris and appears also in the tattooing of their bodies.