Old Colonial says that no book about Northern New Zealand, past or present, would be complete without some special reference to Maori manners. So, with his larger experience to aid me, I am going to try and depict them, in brief and to a limited extent. Perhaps the best way to begin is by sketching the early history of the race, so far as it is known. Also, we will be pedantic for the nonce, and such words of the native tongue as are used shall be free from European corruptions. Thus, to begin with, there being no "s" in the language, which only consists of fourteen letters, and no plural termination, Maori (pr. _mowry_) stands for either one or many, and Pakeha (white man, stranger, pr. _Pah-kay-hah_) signifies either the singular or plural number.[2] [2] See _Pronunciation of Maori Names_, in the Appendix. The Maori are a Turanian race, belonging to the Polynesian family of the Malay branch. According to their own traditions, they came to New Zealand from some island in the South Sea, known to them as Hawaiiki. Probably they had migrated in the first instance from the Malay Peninsula. A certain number of large canoes landed the pilgrim fathers of the race on the shores of Ahinamaui,[3] the names of which are remembered, each of the tribes tracing its ancestry to one. The date of this incursion is reckoned to have been about A.D. 1400; the calculation being arrived at by comparison of certain genealogical tally-sticks kept among the tribes. [3] The North Island. The Maori would seem to have degenerated from some more civilized condition, as is evidenced by the remains among them of astronomical knowledge, and of a higher political constitution, the basis of which is discoverable in their institution of the tapu. They brought with them to New Zealand the kumera (sweet potato), the taro (bread-root), the hue (gourd), the seeds of the koraka tree, the dog, the pukeko (swamp-hen), and one or two of the parrot tribe. They found in New Zealand an aboriginal race of men, inferior to themselves. They also found several species of gigantic birds, called by them moa, and by naturalists _Dinornis_, _Aptornis_, and _Palapteryx_. The Maori, of course, made war upon both man and bird, the latter for food from the first, and the former probably for the same purpose eventually. They had succeeded in exterminating both before Europeans had a chance of making acquaintance with them. Bones of the moa are frequently found, and, till recently, it was believed that living specimens existed in the recesses of forest and mountain. But of the aboriginal race no trace remains, unless, as some have thought, there be an admixture of their blood in the few Maori of Otago and Stewart Island.