Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/68

 "Most ladies and gentlemen do not believe it," the Maori woman said.

I asked her if she believed it, and she replied in her broken English: "I used to did." She said that when she was a child, her people always put food in the spirit house for the spirit, but that lately the custom is going out of fashion. In the village are Catholic and Episcopal churches; the Catholic priest is a native Maori, and the church is heated in cool weather from a hot spring beneath it The Maoris were originally cannibals, but the guide said they ate each other, and did not bother the whites much. In one place we visited here, we saw forks made of human bones We called at the guide's home, and saw one of the tin fireplaces which are seen in seven-tenths of the poorer houses. They cost about $8 put up, and are used for cooking purposes, as well as for heating. They burn out, after a time, but a tinner will rivet in a patch for a small charge. They are certainly very much cheaper than the stone and brick fireplaces we have. A native Maori village looks much like a negro suburb in an American town, but the Maoris are not black; they look like Indians and have straight hair. Some of the women have their lips tattooed, to indicate submission to their husbands, but there is a Suffragette movement on here, as elsewhere, and the Maori woman who showed us about laughed scornfully at the notion that woman is inferior to man Just then we came to a place called the Frog Pond: a mud lake, and there is just enough steam below to cause particles of mud to jump like frogs. Near by, in a hole in the earth, the escaping steam made a sound like the croaking of frogs.