Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/74

 Zealanders speak?" they speak English. The country has one of the best public school systems in the world, and eighty-five per cent of its people can both read and write. It has primary, secondary, and high schools, technical and industrial schools, training colleges for teachers, and schools for the Maoris. It has a limited free-book system, various free scholarships, and evening continuation classes. With the exception of fees charged for instruction in the higher branches at district high schools, education in the public schools is free, and, between the ages of seven and fourteen, compulsory.

My prefatory reference to the New Zealanders would be incomplete without an accompanying introduction of the Dominion's romantic brown people. Beneath the ensign of the Southern Cross and the Union Jack dwells a race of imposing stature, almost the tallest among men. Its members, dark-haired, smiling, and robust, are intelligent, in land collectively wealthy, independent, proud, and jealous of their rights.

Such are the New Zealand Maoris, the venturesome sailors of Hawaiki, the greatest fighting people of the South Pacific. A man-eating, blood-drinking race, they yet had their poets, their orators, their astronomers and wise men. Long before Columbus braved the dangers of unknown seas the Maoris roved the wide Pacific. For thousands of miles they pushed outward from the east, west, and north in naught but canoes, discovering and populating many islands, and in New Zealand reaching their ultima Thule.