[Footnote 44: The Maori, not content with ordinary tattooing, cut and carved intricate designs upon brow and cheek and chin (sometimes also on the hips), thus making it easy for all to read their personal history and the record of their deeds of derring-do. The absence of such scars indicated extreme youth, or a lack of courage exceedingly rare among the men of the race. Each line had its own significance; and a celebrated chief who visited England early in the nineteenth century, directed the artist who painted his portrait to "be sure to copy accurately every single mark" upon his face.] CHAPTER V THE LIFE OF EVERY DAY The Maori of old had two habitations--the _kainga_, or village, wherein they dwelt in "piping time of peace," and the _pa_, or fortress, in which they shut themselves up when harassed by war's alarms. Fire-eaters though they were, they had their moons of peace, during which they accomplished some astonishing results, considering their ignorance of iron, and that their tools were fashioned out of hard wood and yet harder stone. With incredible patience they ground and rubbed and sand-polished, until from lumps of greenstone, jasper, or granite they produced bevelled edge and rounded back. The head was drilled and fitted to a hardwood handle, and there was axe or adze. Imagine the labour of it, you who put down a piece of money and receive the perfected tool of iron! Axe and adze were blunt enough; yet with them the Maori hewed through the mighty bole of the _kauri_-pine; and it was with tools of stone that they chopped and gouged and scooped, until there lay before them the shell of a canoe, eighty feet in length, and capable of holding close upon a hundred men. To work again with knife and awl and chisel, each of stone, and presently the stern-post, ornately carved, rises in an elegant curve to a height of fifteen feet. The prow, too, rises in a curve, but not so high, and is adorned by a huge, grinning head, correctly tattooed, with goggle eyes and defiantly protruded tongue. Paddles are shaped from the tough wood of the _ti_-tree, one for each of the rowers, who kneel in equal numbers on each side, facing the prow, while the steersman wields an oar nine feet in length. The canoe is finished--begun, wrought at and completed with never an iron tool, with not one iron bolt to stay or strengthen. Yet it is beautiful and strong and serviceable, and will skim the stormiest sea as safely as would a gull.