The day was wearing on before Té Peeti‘s speech was done, and, as the Maories say, our waistbands began to slip down low; so all now went to lunch, both Maori and Pakéha, they sitting in circles, each with his bowl, or flax-blade dish, and wooden spoon, we having a table and a chair or two in the Mission-house; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi‘s whitebait that we begged some of him as we passed. The Maories boil the little fish in milk, and flavor them with leeks. Great fish, meat, vegetables, almost all they eat, in short, save whitebait, is “steamed” in the underground native oven. A hole is dug, and filled with wood, and stones are piled upon the wood, a small opening being left for draught. While the wood is burning, the stones become red-hot, and fall through into the hole. They are then covered with damp fern, or else with wet mats of flax, plaited at the moment; the meat is put in, and covered with more mats; the whole is sprinkled with water, and then earth is heaped on till the vapor ceases to escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is delicious. Fish is wrapped in a kind of dock-leaf, and so steamed. While the men‘s eating was thus going on, many of the women stood idly round, and we were enabled to judge of Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp curls, a short black pipe thrust between stained lips, a pair of black eyes gleaming from a tattooed face, denote the Maori _belle_, who wears for her only robe a long bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and neck are tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl with long, smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black eyes: these charms often go along with prominent, thin features, and suggest at once the Jewess and the gipsy girl. The women smoke continually; the men, not much. When at four o‘clock we returned to the flagstaff, we found that the temperature, which during the morning had been too hot, had become that of a fine English June--the air light, the trees and grass lit by a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded me of the Californian haze. During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston‘s proposals as to the division of the purchase-money had been accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia himself, whose vanity would brook no scheme not of his own conception. We were no sooner returned to the ring than he burst in upon us with a defiant speech. “Unjust,” he declared, “as was the proposition of great ‘Pétatoné’ (Featherston), he would have accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed to divide the tribal share; but as the Wanganuis insisted on having a third of his £15,000, and as Pétatoné seemed to support them in their claim, he should have nothing more to do with the sale.” “The Wangenuis claim as our relatives,” he said: “verily, the pumpkin-shoots spread far.”