Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/42

 baskets, each containing from sixty to eighty pounds. The baskets were arranged in a row close together, and the price demanded was a piece of bright-coloured print that would stretch the entire length of the row. It can readily be estimated how cheap the potatoes were.

The modem Maori has sadly deteriorated from his ancestors of sixty to seventy years ago, and, to my mind, the reasons are that he has got too much money for his land, and hence become too lazy to grow his own foodstuffs. He has had enough education to teach him lazy habits, and those habits have engendered dishonesty. They are now a degraded race with little sense of honour, and practically no energy or enterprise, because they have been pampered and spoilt by the white settlers.

In the old days the Maoris were active; they were disciplined; they were always respectful, and showed deference to their chiefs, and they were capable of great endurance. They also showed a degree of independence and self-respect that was highly creditable to them.

Nowadays all those fine characteristics have disappeared. The modem Maori is