as not diminished the destructiveness of war, it
has, at least, very much abated the rancorous feelings with which it was
originally carried on. It has converted it from a contest of fierce and
vindictive passions into an exercise of science. We have still,
doubtless, to lament that the game of blood occasions, whenever it is
played, so terrible a waste of human life and happiness; but even the
displacement of that brute force, and those other merely animal
impulses, by which it used to be mainly directed, and the substitution
of regulating principles of a comparatively intellectual and
unimpassioned nature, may be considered as indicating, even here, a
triumph of civilization.

It is impossible that the business of war can be so corrupting to those
engaged in it when it is chiefly a contest of skill, as when it is
wholly a contest of passion. Nor is it calculated in the one form to
occupy the imagination of a people, as it will do in the other. The evil
is therefore mitigated by the introduction of those arts which to many
may appear aggravations of this curse of mankind.

Rutherford does not take any notice of the pas, or as they have been
called, eppas, or hippahs,[CN] which are found in so many of the New
Zealand villages. These are forts, or strongholds, always erected on an
eminence, and intended for the protection of the tribe and its most
valuable possessions, when reduced by their enemies to the last
extremity. These ancient places of refuge have also been very much
abandoned since the introduction of fire-arms; but formerly, they were
regarded as of great importance.

Cook describes one which he visited on the East Coast, and which was
placed on a high point of land projecting into the sea, as wholly
inaccessible on the three sides on which it was enclosed by the water;
while it was defended on the land side by a ditch of fourteen feet deep,
having a bank raised behind it, which added about eight feet more to the
glacis. Both banks of the ditch are also, in general, surmounted by
palisades, about ten or twelve feet high, formed of strong stakes bound
together with withies, and driven very deep into the ground. Within the
innermost palisade is usually a stage, supported by posts, from which
the besieged throw down darts and stones upon their assailants; and in
addition to this, the interior space, which is generally of considerable
extent, is sometimes divided into numerous petty eminences, each
surrounded b