Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 147, vol. III, October 23, 1886

No. 147.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1886.
BY A NEW ZEALANDER.
An absorbing struggle is going on in New Zealand at present—a struggle of life and death to a gallant and interesting people. The Maoris are apparently making a last stand for existence. Like all savage peoples, they have hitherto been ‘melting away’ at the approach of the whites, until now it is believed they number barely forty thousand throughout the entire colony; whereas in 1835, before English colonisation had commenced in earnest, careful observers estimated that nearly two hundred thousand natives ranged the woods and navigated the rivers and seas of the colony. Captain Cook, probably less accurately, placed his estimate at four hundred thousand. Certain it is that from the time we have first known them, the Maoris, like the Kanakas of the South Sea Islands and the Red Indians of North America, have gone on steadily and even rapidly diminishing in numbers. Just now there is reason to hope that this process of extinction has received a check, and the race seems gathering together all its energies to make one last struggle for existence. Will it be successful?
In the first place, let us glance at the causes leading to the extinction of the aboriginals of New Zealand. These have been very ably set forth in a paper read before the Wellington Philosophical Society by Dr Newman, President of the Society. This gentleman is of opinion that the Maoris were a disappearing race before the English came to New Zealand. One of the principal causes is the natural sterility of the people. While the birth-rate among the European inhabitants of New Zealand is the highest in the world, and while the prolificness of animal life generally in this fertile land is a matter of constant wonder to the naturalist, a birth in a Maori family is, as a rule, of less frequent occurrence than a death; and the absence of children in the native villages is absolutely startling to those who have just seen the troops of rosy-cheeked youngsters that swarm in the European towns. There are various causes for this unfruitfulness of the race; but the principal source assigned by the writer I have quoted is intermarrying, the Maoris being nearly always married either in their own or some nearly adjacent tribe. The rate of mortality, also, is considerably higher among Maoris than with Europeans, consumption being responsible for the greatest ravages in their ranks. The Maoris, who formerly lived in lofty, well-aired, and well-drained hill-forts, now dwell on the oozy soil of the valleys, where the air is stagnant and moisture-laden, while their whares or huts are close and unventilated—forming, in fact, hotbeds of lung disease and rheumatism.