The Maori or native New Zealander was of a different type. The Maori was an immigrant to New Zealand. Some time back there was an overflow of population from the fertile sub-tropical islands of Malaysia. A tribe which had already learned some of the arts of life, which was of a proud and warlike character, took to the sea, as the Norsemen did in Europe, and sought fresh lands for colonisation. Not one wave, but several, of this outflow of colonists struck New Zealand. The primitive people there, the Morioris, could offer but little resistance to the warlike Malaysians, and speedily were vanquished, a few remnants finding refuge in the outlying islets of the New Zealand group. Probably much the same type of emigrant occupied Hawaii at one time, for the Hawaiian and the Maori have much in common. But whilst the perpetual summer of Hawaii softened and enervated its colonists, the bracing and vigorous climate of New Zealand had a precisely opposite effect. The dark race of the Pacific reached there a very high state of development. The Maori system of government was tribal, and there does not seem to have been, up to the time of the coming of the White Man, any attempt on the part of one chief to seize supreme power and become king. Land was held on a communal system, and cultivated fairly well. Art existed, and was applied to boat-building, to architecture, to the embroidering of fabrics, to the carving of stone and wood. War was the great pastime, and cannibalism was customary. Probably this practice was brought by the Maoris from their old home. If it had not been, it might well have sprung up under the strange conditions of life in the new country, for New Zealand naturally possessed not a single mammal, not a beast whose flesh might be eaten. There were birds and lizards, and that was all. The Maoris brought with them dogs, which were bred for eating, but were too few in number to provide a satisfactory food-supply; and rats, which were also eaten. With these exceptions there was no flesh food, and the invitation to cannibalism was clear. A more pleasant feature of the national life of the Maori was a high degree of chivalry. In war and in love he seems to have had very much the same ideas of conduct as the European of the Age of Chivalry. He liked the combat for the combat's own sake, and it is recorded as one of the incidents of the Maori War that when a besieged British force ran short of ammunition, the Maori enemy halved with them their supply, "so as to have a fair fight."