Alliances of a less enduring kind than these are matters of not infrequent occurrence. I have hinted at the hospitable customs of the primitive kainga, and the peculiar freedom, in certain respects, of unmarried Maori girls. It is not necessary to say any more on that head, I think. In justice to the race, it is only fair to say, that no more faithful or virtuous _wife_ exists than a Maori one. Derelictions of conjugal duty both were and are very rarely known, in spite of somewhat arbitrary match-making. Such are a heinous crime in Maori eyes. There are certain drawbacks that are apt to mar the conjugal felicity of the Pakeha who weds a Maori. He is received as a member of the hapu from which he has selected his bride, and is looked upon by all Maori as being in a closer relationship to them than other Pakeha. This adds other inconveniences to those arising from your wife's predilection for squatting on the drawing-room floor and smoking her pipe; her careless _negligé_ in dress, except on state occasions; and her many little delightful and eccentric propensities. For, you have married not only your wife, but also all her relations and kindred. They will visit you, twenty or thirty at a time, and stop a week or longer. They will slaughter your pigs and sheep, dig up your potatoes and kumera, and feed freely upon them. Your grocery bill will attain to frightful proportions; and the friendly mob will camp all over the house, just how and where it pleases them. If you resent these proceedings, your wife will cry and upbraid you, and might even desert you altogether, while the hapu would look upon it as the deadliest insult. As a _per contra_, your wife's tribe will stand by you in all difficulties and dangers. They will fight for you with pleasure, will die for you and with you if required; and a slight put upon you by anybody whatsoever, is put upon the tribe in equal degree. You may cajole these ladies and gentlemen into helping you with any work that is going forward, but the perquisites they will take to themselves will be safe to ruin you. You may return their visits, as much as you like, but that will not reimburse you much. All that remains to you to do is to sell your land, and to remove to some distant part of the country, where there are no Maori. You must, in such a case, carefully prepare some artful and specious tale to satisfy your numerous relations-in-law, and mitigate their grief at losing you. Lastly, you must not take your wife out of New Zealand, for she will pine, and possibly die, if you do.