ribe to tribe of cannibals
and warriors say something for the generosity of the latter as well as
for the devotion of the travellers. For fifty years after Marsden's
landing no white missionary lost his life by Maori hands. Almost
every less serious injury had to be endured. In the face of hardship,
insult, and plunder, the work went on. A schooner, the _Herald_, was
built in the Bay of Islands to act as messenger and carrier between
the missionary stations, which--pleasant oases in the desert of
barbarism--began to dot the North Island from Whangaroa as far south
as Rotorua among the Hot Lakes. By 1838 there were thirteen of them.
The ruins of some are still to be seen, surrounded by straggling plots
run to waste, "where once a garden smiled." When Charles Darwin,
during the voyage of the _Beagle_, visited the Bay of Islands, the
missionary station at Waimate struck him as the one bright spot in
a gloomy and ill-ordered land. Darwin, by the way, was singularly
despondent in his estimate both of Australia and New Zealand. Colonial
evolution was clearly not amongst his studies.

[Illustration: CARVED GATEWAY OF MAORI VILLAGE

_From a Sketch by_ GENERAL ROBLEY.]

Colonists as a rule shrug their shoulders when questioned as to the
depth of Maori religious feeling. It is enough to point out that a
Christianity which induced barbarian masters to release their slaves
without payment or condition must have had a reality in it at which
the kindred of Anglo-Saxon sugar-planters have no right to sneer. Odd
were the absurdities of Maori lay preachers, and knavery was
sometimes added to absurdity. Yet these dark-skinned teachers carried
Christianity into a hundred nooks and corners. Most of them were
honest enthusiasts. Two faced certain death in the endeavour to carry
the Gospel to the Taupo heathen, and met their fate with cheerful
courage. Comic as Maori sectarianism became, it was not more
ridiculous than British. It is true that rival tribes gloried in
belonging to different denominations, and in slighting converts
belonging to other churches. On one occasion, a white wayfarer, when
asking shelter for the night at a _pa_, was gravely asked to name his
church. He recognised that his night's shelter was at stake, and had
no notion what was the reigning sect of the village. Sharpened by
hunger, his wit was equal to the emergency, and his answer, "the true
church," gained him supper and a bed. Too much stress has been laid on