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 visitor, and the cookery will all be after the European fashion. The crockery for the different tribes or hapus will all be of different patterns; and when one tries to recall such a feast in the not very olden time, with its accompaniment of war-dance and possibly sodden or roasted human flesh as the pièce de résistance, one begins to realize somewhat the mighty change which is now apparent in the character as well as in the physical surroundings of the Maoris after twenty years. At a banquet given to the Duke of Edinburgh during his visit, some of the big chiefs were seen by my informant to go into the dining-hall, and each seizing a goose, or turkey, or other fowl, proceeded to carve it in fine old savage fashion by dismembering the carcase with teeth and fingers, much as a wolf would have done. These very men now are conversant with silk hats, paper collars, Albert chains, and all the conventionalities of the correct diner-out.

The change is infinitely to the advantage of the noble savage, if, with the conventionalities he could only happily discard the vices and follies of our modern civilization.

I had the good fortune to meet a band of real primitive Maoris at Wairoa. They were Hau-Haus from the Urewera country, and their dress, weapons, and manners were as yet unmodified by European contact. Some years ago Government, for some service or other, had granted the Ureweras a sum of 5000l., and traders were attracted to the wild and almost inaccessible mountain