The stature of the men in general is equal to the largest of those in Europe: they are stout, well limbed, and fleshy; but not fat, like the lazy and luxurious inhabitants of the islands in the South Seas: they are also exceedingly vigorous and active; and have an adroitness and manual dexterity in an uncommon degree, which are discovered in whatever they do. I have seen the strokes of fifteen paddles on a side in one of their canoes made with incredible quickness, and yet with such minute exactness of time, that all the rowers seemed to be actuated by one common soul. Their colour in general is brown; but in few deeper than that of a Spaniard, who has been exposed to the sun; in many not so deep. The women have not a feminine delicacy in their appearance, but their voice is remarkably soft; and by that, the dress of both sexes being the same, they are principally distinguished: they have, however, like the women of other countries, more airy cheerfulness, and a greater flow of animal spirits, than the other sex. Their hair, both of the head and beard, is black; and their teeth extremely regular, and as white as ivory: the features of both sexes are good: they seem to enjoy high health; and we saw many who appeared to be of a great age. The dispositions both of the men and women seemed to be mild and gentle: they treat each other with the tenderest affection, but are implacable towards their enemies, to whom, as I have before observed, they never give quarter. It may, perhaps, at first, seem strange, that where there is so little to be got by victory, there should so often be war; and that every little district of a country inhabited by people so mild and placid, should be at enmity with all the rest. But possibly more is to be gained by victory among these people than at first appears, and they may be prompted to mutual hostilities by motives which no degree of friendship or affection is able to resist. It appears, by the account that has already been given of them, that their principal food is fish, which can only be procured upon the sea-coast; and there, in sufficient quantities, only at certain times; the tribes, therefore, who live inland, if any such there are, and even those upon the coast, must be frequently in danger of perishing by famine. Their country produces neither sheep, nor goats, nor hogs, nor cattle; tame fowls they have none, nor any art by which those that are wild can be caught in sufficient plenty to serve as provision. If there are any whose situation cuts them off from a supply of fish, the only succedaneum of all other animal food, except dogs, they have nothing to support life, but the vegetables that have already been mentioned, of which the chief are fern-root, yams, clams, and potatoes; when by any accident these fail, the distress must be dreadful; and even among the inhabitants of the coast, many tribes must frequently be reduced to nearly the same situation, either by the failure of their plantations, or the deficiency of their dry stock, during the season when but few fish are to be caught. These considerations will enable us to account, not only for the perpetual danger in which the people who inhabit this country appear to live, by the care which they take to fortify every village, but for the horrid practice of eating those who are killed in battle; for the hunger of him who is pressed by famine to fight, will absorb every feeling, and every sentiment which would restrain him from allaying it with the body of his adversary. It may, however, be remarked, that, if this account of the origin of so horrid a practice is true, the mischief does by no means end with the necessity that produced it: after the practice has been once begun on one side by hunger, it will naturally be adopted on the other by revenge. Nor is this all, for though it may be pretended, by some who wish to appear speculative and philosophical, that whether the dead body of an enemy be eaten or buried is in itself a matter perfectly indifferent; as it is, whether the breasts or thighs of a woman should be covered or naked; and that prejudice and habit only make us shudder at the violation of custom in one instance, and blush at it in the other: yet, leaving this as a point of doubtful disputation, to be discussed at leisure, it may safely be affirmed, that the practice of eating human flesh, whatever it may be in itself, is relatively, and in its consequences, most pernicious; tending manifestly to eradicate a principle which is the chief security of human life, and more frequently restrains the hand of murder than the sense of duty, or even the fear of punishment.
Among those who are accustomed to eat the dead, death must have lost much of its horror; and where there is little horror at the sight of death, there will not be much repugnance to kill. A sense of duty, and fear of punishment, may be more easily surmounted than the feelings of nature, or those which have been ingrafted upon nature by early prejudice and uninterrupted custom. The horror of the murderer arises less from the guilt of the fact, than its natural effect; and he who has familiarised the effect, will consequently lose much of the horror. By our laws, and our religion, murder and theft incur the same punishment, both in this world and the next; yet, of the multitude who would deliberately steal, there are but very few who would deliberately kill, even to procure much greater advantage. But there is the strongest reason to believe, that those who have been so accustomed to prepare a human body for a meal, that they can with as little feeling cut up a dead man, as our cook-maids divide a dead rabbit for a fricassee, would feel as little horror in committing a murder as in picking a pocket, and consequently would take away life with as little compunction as property; so that men, under these circumstances, would be made murderers by the slight temptations that now make them thieves. If any man doubts whether this reasoning is conclusive, let him ask himself, whether in his own opinion he should not be safer with a man in whom the horror of destroying life is strong, whether in consequence of natural instinct unsubdued, or of early prejudice, which has nearly an equal influence, than in the power of a man who under any temptation to murder him would be restrained only by considerations of interest; for to these all motives of mere duty may be reduced, as they must terminate either in hope of good, or fear of evil.
The situation and circumstances, however, of these poor people, as well as their temper, are favourable to those who shall settle as a colony among them. Their situation sets them in need of protection, and their temper renders it easy to attach them by kindness; and whatever may be said in favour of a savage life among people who live in luxurious idleness upon the bounty of nature, civilization would certainly be a blessing to those whom her parsimony scarcely furnishes with the bread of life, and who are perpetually destroying each other by violence, as the only alternative of perishing by hunger.
But these people, from whatever cause, being inured to war, and by habit considering every stranger as an enemy, were always disposed to attack us when they were not intimidated by our manifest superiority. At first, they had no notion of any superiority but numbers; and when this was on their side, they considered all our expressions of kindness as the artifices of fear and cunning, to circumvent them, and preserve ourselves: but when they were once convinced of our power, after having provoked us to the use of our fire-arms, though loaded only with small shot; and of our clemency, by our forbearing to make use of weapons so dreadful except in our defence, they became at once friendly, and even affectionate, placing in us the most unbounded confidence, and doing every thing which could incite us to put equal confidence in them. It is also remarkable, that when an intercourse was once established between us, they were very rarely detected in any act of dishonesty. Before, indeed, and while they considered us as enemies, who came upon their coast only to make an advantage of them, they did not scruple by any means to make any advantage of us; and would, therefore, when they had received the price of any thing they had offered to sell, pack up both the purchase and the purchase money with all possible composure, as so much lawful plunder from people who had no view but to plunder them.
I have observed that our friends in the South Seas had not even the idea of indecency, with respect to any object or any action; but this was by no means the case with the inhabitants of New Zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there was as much modesty, reserve, and decorum with respect to actions, which yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the politest people in Europe. The women were not impregnable; but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us, and according to their notions the agreement was as innocent. When any of our people made an overture to one of their young women, he was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary to treat the wife for a night with the same delicacy that is here required by the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated, was sure to be disappointed.
One of our gentlemen having made his addresses to a family of the better sort, received an answer, which, translated into our language, according to the mode and spirit of it, as well as the letter, would have been exactly in these terms: “Any of these young ladies will think themselves honoured by your addresses, but you must first make me a suitable present, and you must then come and sleep with us on shore, for daylight must by no means be a witness of what passes between you.”
I have already observed, that in personal cleanliness they are not quite equal to our friends at Otaheite; because, not having the advantage of so warm a climate, they do not so often go into the water; but the most disgustful thing about them is the oil, with which, like the islanders, they anoint their hair: it is certainly the fat either of fish or of birds, melted down, and though the better sort have it fresh, their inferiors use that which is rancid, and consequently are almost as disagreeable to the smell as a Hottentot; neither are their heads free from vermin, though we observed that they were furnished with combs, both of bone and wood: these combs are sometimes worn stuck upright in the hair as an ornament, a fashion which at present prevails among the ladies of England. The men generally wear their beards short, and their hair tied upon the crown of the head in a bunch, in which they stick the feathers of various birds in different manners, according to their fancies; sometimes one is placed on each side of the temples, pointing forwards, which we thought made a very disagreeable appearance. The women wear their hair sometimes cropped short, and sometimes flowing over their shoulders.
The bodies of both sexes are marked with the black stains called Amoco, by the same method that is used at Otaheite, and called Tattowing; but the men are more marked, and the women less. The women in general stain no part of their bodies but the lips, though sometimes they are marked with small black patches on other parts: the men, on the contrary, seem to add something every year to the ornaments of the last, so that some of them, who appeared to be of an advanced age, were almost covered from head to foot. Besides the Amoco, they have marks impressed by a method unknown to us, of a very extraordinary kind: they are furrows of about a line deep, and a line broad, such as appear upon the bark of a tree which has been cut through, after a year’s growth: the edges of these furrows are afterwards indented by the same method, and being perfectly black, they make a most frightful appearance. The faces of the old men are almost covered with these marks; those who are very young, black only their lips like the women; when they are somewhat older, they have generally a black patch upon one cheek, and over one eye, and so proceed gradually, that they may grow old and honourable together: but though we could not but be disgusted with the horrid deformity which these stains and furrows produced in the “human face divine,” we could not but admire the dexterity and art with which they were impressed. The marks upon the face in general are spirals, which are drawn with great nicety, and even elegance, those on one side exactly corresponding with those on the other: the marks on the body somewhat resemble the foliage in old chased ornaments, and the convolutions of fillagree work; but in these they have such a luxuriance of fancy, that of an hundred, which at first sight appeared to be exactly the same, no two were, upon a close examination, found to be alike. We observed, that the quantity and form of these marks were different in different parts of the coast, and that as the principal seat of them at Otaheite was the breech, in New Zealand it was sometimes the only part which was free, and in general was less distinguished than any other.
The skins of these people, however, are not only dyed, but painted; for, as I have before observed, they smear their bodies with red oker, some rubbing it on dry, and some applying it in large patches mixed with oil, which is always wet, and which the least touch will rub off, so that the transgressions of such of our people as were guilty of ravishing a kiss from these blooming beauties, were most legibly written upon their faces.
The dress of a New Zealander is certainly, to a stranger at first sight, the most uncouth that can be imagined. It is made of the leaves of the flag, which has been described among the vegetable productions of this country: these leaves are split into three or four slips, and the slips, when they are dry, interwoven with each other into a kind of stuff between netting and cloth, with all the ends, which are eight or nine inches long, hanging out on the upper side, like the shag or thrump mats, which we sometimes see lying in a passage. Of this cloth, if cloth it may be called, two pieces serve for a complete dress; one of them is tied over their shoulders with a string, and reaches as low as the knees; to the end of this string is fastened a bodkin of bone, which is easily passed through any two parts of this upper garment, so as tack them together; the other piece is wrapped round the waist, and reaches nearly to the ground: the lower garment, however, is worn by the men only upon particular occasions; but they wear a belt, to which a string is fastened, for a very singular use. The inhabitants of the South Sea islands slit up the prepuce so as to prevent it from covering the glans of the penis; but these people, on the contrary, bring the prepuce over the glans, and to prevent it from being drawn back by the contraction of the part, they tie the string which hangs from their girdle round the end of it. The glans, indeed, seemed to be the only part of their body which they were solicitous to conceal, for they frequently threw off all their dress but the belt and string, with the most careless indifference, but showed manifest signs of confusion, when, to gratify our curiosity, they were requested to untie the string, and never consented but with the utmost reluctance and shame. When they have only their upper garment on, and sit upon their hams, they bear some resemblance to a thatched house; but this covering, though it is ugly, is well adapted to the use of those who frequently sleep in the open air, without any other shelter from the rain.