Homeless white babies and children need not be a charge on a municipality where there is a Maori settlement. Natives will take all the white foundlings that are offered them. As they are an honest race, white children are not only well looked after, but are taught good principles also.
Rubbing noses and shaking hands is the mode of greeting when Maori meets Maori, and their offspring learn that custom early. As a mother, carrying her child on her back, bends to "burnish" noses with a friend, the children seem to lean to one side and watch their mammas carry out this old Maori mode of greeting.
Pakeha is the native word for white people, and when white persons speak of native and white, pakeha and native are the distinguishing terms used.
Visitors to Rotorua are afforded much amusement by native dances and hakas. Women engage in the poi dance, which is a series of motions, gone through to the accompaniment of a concertina. In the hands of each woman is a ball of grass as large as a peach, with a grass string attached. Time is kept with these as they come in contact with the other hand, and when a dozen strike in unison a shuffling sound results. The grass or flax ball is termed the poi. Men only take part in the haka, which is a war dance, and a good one, too. An extended account of the Maori and his customs would make interesting reading. They number less than 50,000.
Kaikai is the name they give to food in New Zealand. Grub, scoff, tucker, and kaikai is the collection of food names to this point.
We now take leave of this pretty place, where crutches, walking-sticks, and invalid chairs are converted into kindling wood; where pain evaporates with the sulphurous odors, and men are made anew by bathing in that far-off pool of Siloam—where, as Langhorne so beautifully puts it,
"Affliction flies, and hope returns,"
Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, having a population of 85,000, and was the busiest we had visited. This is another leg-straining place, but not so hilly as Dunedin or Wellington. Ships from the South Sea Islands are arriving and departing continually, as Auckland has a big trade with these groups. Most of the shipping between Australia and New Zealand passes through Auckland; many large steamships from Europe also head for this port.
The rosy-cheeked women and children and the healthy appearance of New Zealanders generally is a feature one cannot fail to observe. Besides, there are few poor people—none wearing ragged clothes, certainly—every one tidy in appearance and well dressed. Few foreign-speaking people live in Auckland—90 per cent, are Britishers—and all have a fair education. Schooling advantages are good.