together to their
own country, taking the body of their lamented relative along with
them. This happened many years before I came to the country, and when
my _rangatira_ was one of the most famous fighting-men in his tribe.

This Maori _rangatira_ I am describing had passed his whole life, with
but little intermission, in scenes of battle, murder, and bloodthirsty
atrocities of the most terrific description; mixed with actions of the
most heroic courage, self-sacrifice, and chivalric daring, as leaves
one perfectly astounded to find them the deeds of one and the same
people: one day doing acts which, had they been performed in ancient
Greece, would have immortalized the actors, and the next committing
barbarities too horrible for relation, and almost incredible.

The effect of a life of this kind was observable plainly enough, in my
friend. He was utterly devoid of what weak mortals call "compassion."
He seemed to have no more feeling for the pain, tortures, or death of
others than a stone. Should one of his family be dying or wounded, he
merely felt it as the loss of one fighting man. As for the death of a
woman, or any non-combatant, he did not feel it at all; though the
person might have suffered horrid tortures: indeed I have seen him
scolding severely a fine young man, his near relative, when actually
expiring, for being such a fool as to blow himself up by accident, and
deprive his family of a fighting man. The last words the dying man
heard were these:--"It serves you right. There you are, looking very
like a burnt stick! It serves you right--a burnt stick! Serves you
right!" It really _was_ vexatious. A fine stout young fellow to be
wasted in that way.

As for fear, I saw one or two instances to prove he knew very little
about it: indeed, to be killed in battle seemed to him a natural death.
He was always grumbling that the young men thought of nothing but
trading; and whenever he proposed to them to take him where he might
have a final battle (_he riri wakamutunga_), where he might escape
dying of old age, they always kept saying, "Wait till we get more
muskets," or "more gunpowder," or more something or another: "as if men
could not be killed without muskets!" He was not cruel either; he was
only unfeeling. He had been guilty, it is true, in his time, of what we
should call terrific atrocities to his prisoners; which he calmly and
calculatingly perpetrated as _utu_, or retaliation for similar
barbarities c