There is one great difference which severs the Maories from the other Polynesians. In New Zealand caste is unknown; every Maori is a gentleman or a slave. Chiefs are elected by the popular voice, not, indeed, by a show of hands, but by a sort of general agreement of the tribe; but the chief is a political, not a social superior. In the windy climate of New Zealand men can push themselves to the front too surely by their energy and toil, to remain socially in an inferior class. Caste is impossible where the climate necessitates activity and work. The Maories, too, we should remember, are an immigrant race; probably no high-caste men came with them--all started from equal rank. Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence to their well-born women; slave women are of no account. The Friendly Islanders exclude both man and woman slave from the Future Life; but the Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to heaven, but his wife to council. A Maori chief is as obedient to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for the praising glance or smile of his betrothed, as a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a Cretan volunteer; and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot have gone further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in spurring on the men to war. The Maori Andromaches outdo their European sisters, for they themselves proceed to battle, and animate their Hectors by songs and shouts. Even the scepter of tribal rule--the greenstone _meri_, or royal club--is often intrusted to them by their warrior husbands, and used to lead the war-dance or the charge. The delicacy of treatment shown by the Maories toward their women may go far to account for the absence of contempt for the native race among the English population. An Englishman‘s respect for the sex is terribly shocked when he sees a woman staggering under the weight of the wigwam and the children of a “brave,” who stalks behind her through the streets of Austin, carrying his rifles and his pistols, but not another ounce, unless in the shape of a thong with which to hasten the squaw‘s steps. What wonder if the men who sit by smoking while their wives totter under basketsful of mould on the boulevard works at Delhi are called lazy scoundrels by the press of the Northwest, or if the Shoshonés, who eat the bread of idleness themselves, and hire out their wives to the Pacific Railroad Company, are looked upon as worse than dogs in Nevada, where the thing is done? It is the New Zealand native‘s treatment of his wife that makes it possible for an honest Englishman to respect or love an honest Maori.