it necessary to state one decided benefit which
has resulted from that intercourse, and which, in my opinion, far more
than counterbalances the evil against which there has been raised so loud
an outcry.

Before our intercourse took place with the New Zealanders, a universal
and unnatural custom existed amongst them, which was that of destroying
most of their female children in infancy, their excuse being that they
were quite as much trouble to rear, and consumed just as much food, as a
male child, and yet, when grown up, they were not fit to go to war as
their boys were. The strength and pride of a chief then consisted in the
number of his sons; while the few females who had been suffered to live
were invariably looked down upon by all with the utmost contempt. They
led a life of misery and degradation. The difference now is most
remarkable. The natives, seeing with what admiration strangers beheld
their fine young women, and what handsome presents were made to them, by
which their families were benefited, feeling also that their influence
was so powerful over the white men, have been latterly as anxious to
cherish and protect their infant girls as they were formerly cruelly bent
on destroying them. Therefore, if one sin has been, to a certain degree,
encouraged, a much greater one has been annihilated. Infanticide, the
former curse of this country, and the cause of its scanty population, a
crime every way calculated to make men bloody-minded and ferocious, and
to stifle every benevolent and tender feeling, has totally disappeared
wherever an intercourse has taken place between the natives and the crews
of European vessels.

The New Zealand method of "courtship and matrimony" is a most
extraordinary one; so much so, that an observer could never imagine any
affection existed between the parties. A man sees a woman whom he fancies
he should like for a wife; he asks the consent of her father, or, if an
orphan, of her nearest relation, which, if he obtains, he carries his
"intended" off by force, she resisting with all her strength; and, as the
New Zealand girls are generally pretty robust, sometimes a dreadful
struggle takes place; both are soon stripped to the skin, and it is
sometimes the work of hours to remove the fair prize a hundred yards. If
she breaks away, she instantly flies from her antagonist, and he has his
labour to commence again. We may suppose that if the lady feels any wish
to be united to her would-be