ermit his favorite wife to eat with
him, though not out of the same dish." Ellis relates (III., 253) that
New Zealanders are "addicted to the greatest vices that stain the
human character--treachery, cannibalism, infanticide, and murder." The
women caught in battle, as well as the men, were, he says, enslaved or
eaten. "Sometimes they chopped off the legs and arms and otherwise
mangled the body before they put the victim to death." Concubines had
to do service as household drudges. A man on dying would bequeath his
wives to his brother. No land was bequeathed to female children. The
real Maori feeling toward women is brought out in the answer given to
a sister who went to her brothers to ask for a share of the lands of
the family: "Why, you're only a slave to blow up your husband's fire."
(Shortland, 119, 255-58.)

MAORI MORALS AND CAPACITY FOR LOVE

When Hawkesworth visited New Zealand with Captain Cook, he one day
came accidentally across some women who were fishing, and who had
thrown off their last garments. When they saw him they were as
confused and distressed as Diana and her nymphs; they hid among the
rocks and crouched down in the sea until they had made and put on
girdles of seaweeds (456). "There are instances," writes William Brown
(36-37), "of women committing suicide from its being said that they
had been seen naked. A chief's wife took her own life because she had
been hung up by the heels and beaten in the presence of the whole
tribe."

Shall we conclude from this that the Maoris were genuinely modest and
perhaps capable of that delicacy in regard to sexual matters which is
a prerequisite of sentimental love? What is modesty? The _Century
Dictionary_ says it is "decorous feeling or behavior; purity or
delicacy of thought or manner; reserve proceeding from pure or chaste
character;" and the _Encyclopaedic Dictionary_ defines it as
"chastity; purity of manners; decency; freedom from lewdness or
un-chastity." Now, Maori modesty, if such it maybe called, was only
skin deep. Living in a colder climate than other Polynesians, it
became customary among them to wear more clothing; and what custom
prescribes must be obeyed to the letter among all these peoples, be
the ordained dress merely a loin cloth or a necklace, or a cover for
the back only, or full dress. It does not argue true modesty on the
part of a Maori woman to cover those parts of her body which custom
orders her to cover, any more than it argu