club,
the quaint _mere_[1] and the stone tomahawk--required strength and
endurance as well as a skill only to be obtained by hard practice. The
very sports and dances of the Maori were such as only the active and
vigorous could excel in. Slaves were there, but not enough to relieve
the freemen from the necessity for hard work. Strange sacred customs,
such as _tapu_ (vulgarly Anglicized as taboo) and _muru_, laughable as
they seem to us, tended to preserve public health, to ensure respect
for authority, and to prevent any undue accumulation of goods and
chattels in the hands of one man. Under the law of _muru_ a man
smitten by sudden calamity was politely plundered of all his
possessions. It was the principle under which the wounded shark is
torn to pieces by its fellows, and under which the merchant wrecked on
the Cornish coast in bye-gone days was stripped of anything the waves
had spared. Among the Maoris, however, it was at once a social duty
and a personal compliment. If a man's hut caught fire his dearest
friends clustered round like bees, rescued all they could from the
flames, and--kept it. It is on record that a party about to pay a
friendly visit to a neighbour village were upset in their canoe as
they were paddling in through the surf. The canoe was at once claimed
by the village chief--their host. Moreover they would have been
insulted if he had not claimed it. Of course, he who lost by _muru_
one week might be able to repay himself the next.

[Footnote 1: Tasman thought the mere resembled the _parang_, or heavy,
broad-bladed knife, of the Malays. Others liken it to a paddle, and
matter-of-fact colonists to a tennis-racket or a soda-water bottle
flattened.]

Certain colonial writers have exhausted their powers ridicule--no very
difficult task--upon what they inaccurately call Maori communism. But
the system, in full working order, at least developed the finest race
of savages the world has seen, and taught them barbaric virtues which
have won from their white supplanters not only respect but liking.
The average colonist regards a Mongolian with repulsion, a Negro with
contempt, and looks on an Australian black as very near to a wild
beast; but he likes the Maoris, and is sorry that they are dying out.

No doubt the remnants of the Maori tribal system are useless, and
perhaps worse than useless. The tribes still own land in common, and
much of it. They might be very wealthy landlords if they cared to
lease