While we were at breakfast, a Ngatiapa officer of the native contingent brought down a letter to Dr. Featherston from Hunia and Hori Kingi, calling us to a general meeting of the tribes convened for noon, to be held in the Ngatiapa Pah. The letter was addressed, “Kia té Pétatoné té Huperinténé”--“To the Featherston, the Superintendent”--the alterations in the chief words being made to bring them within the grasp of Maori tongues, which cannot sound _f‘s_, _th‘s_, nor sibilants of any kind. The absence of harsh sounds, and the rule which makes every word end with a vowel, give a peculiar softness and charm to the Maori language. Sugar becomes huka; scissors, hikiri; sheep, hipi; and so with all English words adopted into Maori. The rendering of the Hebrew names of the Old Testament is often singular: Genesis becomes Kenehi; Exodus is altered into Ekoruhe; Leviticus is hardly recognizable in Rewitikuha; Tiuteronomi reads strangely for Deuteronomy, and Hohua for Joshua; Jacob, Isaac, Moses, become Hakopa, Ihaka, and Mohi; Egypt is softened into Ihipa, Jordan into Horámo. The list of the nations of Canaan seems to have been a stumbling-block in the missionaries’ way. The success obtained with Girgashites has not been great; it stands Kirekahi; Gaash is transmuted into Kaaha, and Eleazar into Ereatara. When we drove on to the ground all was at a deadlock--the flagstaff bare, the chiefs sleeping in their wahrés, and the common folk whiling away the hours with haka songs. Dr. Featherston retired from the ground, declaring that till the Queen‘s flag was hoisted he would attend no debate; but he permitted us to wander in among the Maories. We were introduced to Tamiana té Rauparaha, chief of the Ngatitoa branch of the Ngatiraukawa, and son of the great cannibal chief of the same name, who murdered Captain Wakefield. Old Rauparaha it was who hired an English ship to carry him and his nation to the South Island, where they ate several tribes, boiling the chiefs, by the captain‘s consent, in the ship‘s coppers, and salting down for future use the common people. When the captain, on return to port, claimed his price, Rauparaha told him to go about his business, or he should be salted too. The captain took the hint, but he did not escape for long, as he was finally eaten by the Sandwich Islanders in Hawaii. In answer to our request for a dance-song, Tamiana and Horomona Torémi replied, through an interpreter, that “the hands of the singers should beat time as fast as the pinions of the wild duck;” and in a minute we were in the middle of an animated crowd of boys and women collected by Porea, the buffoon. As soon as the singers had squatted upon the grass, the jester began to run slowly up and down between their ranks as they sat swinging backward and forward in regular time, groaning in chorus, and looking upward with distorted faces.