Before passing on with Cook to the discovery of eastern Australia, it may be of interest to give here his first impressions of the Maoris or indigenes of New Zealand--though the name of Maori did not come into use till the early nineteenth century. The men were tall and sometimes handsome (except for their frightful face-tatuing), with the features of white men and a skin colour not much darker. They usually wore short beards. The women were generally much shorter in stature than the men, with darker skins and more negroid features. [Even at the present day some of the Maori women are very negroid in appearance. This was also the case with both men and women of some of the tribes in the great South Island; and it would really seem that New Zealand had at one time received a colonization from the direction of Melanesia.] The food of the Maoris has already been described in its main elements--sweet potatoes, gourds, fern roots, and the flesh of human beings, dogs, and wood-birds. Cook also mentions that they ate penguins, albatrosses, and seals. They had no intoxicating drink, and water was their only beverage. The Maoris seemed to Cook singularly free of disease and to enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health. The expedition never saw a single person who appeared to have any bodily complaint or to suffer from any eruption of the skin. Their wounds healed with remarkable facility, and in all large assemblages of people were noticed the number of old men, who, by the loss of their hair and teeth, appeared to be very ancient, but who were not decrepit, and though not equal to the young in muscular strength, exhibited great liveliness of disposition.