[Footnote 4: Of the Maori's passion for fighting for its own sake, with the chivalrous appearance that it somewhat misleadingly bore, I will give an instance. A certain chief had a missionary whom he desired to get rid of. Whether he was tired of his sermons, disliked his ritual, or what, I cannot say. However, he forwarded him on to another chief, with his compliments, as a present. Chief number two not being in need of a chaplain, having no living vacant, and having perhaps, too, a suspicion that the missionary was unsound in some respect from the careless way he was disposed of, declined him, and returned him untried. Chief number one was insulted, and declared that if chief number two had not known his superiority in arms and ammunition, he would not have dared to behave in such manner. When this came to the ears of number two, he divided his arms, &c., into two halves, and sent one to the enemy, with an invitation to war. A distinguished friend of mine in New Zealand once asked a Maori chief who had fought against us on the Waikato, why, when he had command of a certain road, he did not attack the ammunition and provision trains? "Why, you fool!" answered the Maori, much astonished, "If we had stolen their powder and food, how could they have fought?" Sometimes two villages would get up a little war, and the inhabitants, after potting at each other all day, would come out of their "pas" in the evening and talk over their day's sport in the most friendly manner. "I nearly bagged your brother to-day." "Ah, but you should have seen how I made your old father-in-law skip!" and so on. After one or two had been really killed, they would become more in earnest. I have heard old Archdeacon ----, of Tauranga, relate how in one of these petty wars he has known the defenders of a pa send out to their adversaries to say they were short of provisions, who immediately sent them a supply to go on with. Also how he has performed service on Sunday between two belligerent pas, the inhabitants of which came out to pray, and met with the most perfect amity, returning to their pas when service was over, to recommence hostilities on Monday morning. The fact is, that they were, as the Pakeha Maori says, a race so demoralized by perpetual war that they had got to look instinctively upon fighting as the chief object in life. How difficult it was for the average Englishman to see this at first, and how misleading traits such as I have mentioned might be to him, it is not hard to imagine.]