I had returned to Auckland from a visit with a friend whose wife was Maori, in the company of her nephew. He carried with him a basket of eels as a gift to his mother, and walked up the street with me. At a corner he was hailed by a dark-skinned man in a well-cut business suit, and said, "There is my father. I must leave you." In another moment he was in a large touring car and was whizzed away by his Maori father at the wheel. No wonder I hadn't been able to see any Maories.

I visited a school where Maori boys are being encouraged to artificial exercises,—sports, hurdle-jumping, running. I watched them make ready, eager for the petty prizes offered. Off went their shoes, out went their chests, expanded with ancestral joy. In their bare feet, still as tough as in former days before they were induced to buy cowhides, they skipped over the ground, filled for the moment with the glory of being alive. Their faces broke out in fantastic, native grimaces and contortions as though an imaginary enemy confronted them. But alas, they were seeking him in the wrong direction! The enemy comes with no spears, and no clang, but he is more deadly. He is not without but within. He makes them cough. They fall behind.

"They do not last long," said the Briton who was instructing them. "They are dying rapidly of consumption. As long as we keep them here in school they are all right. Finer specimens of human physique could not be found anywhere. But as soon as they return to their pas, and live in the squalor of the native villages, they return to all the old methods of life and soon go under."

I set out on my tramp through New Zealand. At Bombey, a few days' jaunt from Auckland, I met an old settler, whose accounts of the great and last war of the redcoats with the fierce fighters of Maoriland dated back to our own Civil War, 1861-64. Until that time both Maories and Britons said, with few exceptions, "Our races cannot mix. One or the other of us must give away." Naturally, the Maories had the prior claim, but they finally yielded, surrendering their lands to the aliens at Ngaruawahia, "The Meeting of the Waters," that little hamlet lying in the crotch between the beautiful Waikato River and one of its tributaries. And henceforward, the two races were constrained to meet, and rush down together into that green sea of human commonalty, albeit one of them contributes the dominant volume.

Maori legend has it that the Maories are the descendants of the great Rangatira (chief) who was the offspring of a similarly great Tanewa (shark). He was born in the dark southern caves of the Tongariro Mountains, and the spirits of their ancestors have always dwelt along the broad Waikato. Along this river I wandered for many days, but I found few of the Rangatira's descendants. If one is quiet and alone the voice of the great Tanewa will call softly through the marsh rushes from out of the heart of the quivering flax. It is peaceful and encompassing, modest and almost afraid. I heard it and I am sure those Maories hear it who are not too engrossed in the scramble after foreign trinkets. It said: "The last mortal or man descendant of mine will be the offspring of a Pakeha-Maori (a white man who lives among the Maories) who will live in the cities and rush about in motor-cars, but I shall remain in the marshes, the calm rivers, and near the glittering leaves of flax."

A few miles farther on I came to Huntley, and hearing that there was a native village across the Waikato River, I turned thither by way of the bridge. I overtook two wahines, slovenly, indolent, careless in their manners. They spoke to me flippantly. They wanted to know if I was bound for the missionaries' place. This led to questions from me: Why were they turning Mormon? Which sect did they prefer? But I could obtain answers only by innuendo. I left these two women behind and found three others chasing a pig in an open field, three boys bathing a horse in the deep river. All about the village was strewn refuse; vicious dogs slunk hungrily about,—neglect, neglect, on every hand. But instead of flimsy native huts there were wooden shacks with corrugated iron roofs, the longer to remain unregenerate, breeders of disease and wasters of human energy.

But the more elaborate native village at Rotorua, at the other end of the island, where visitors are frequent, was more up-to-date and cleaner. And on a little knoll was a model of an old Maori pah, such as was used in the days before guns made it possible to fight in ambush and in the valleys, and brought the sturdy savages down not only from their more wholesome heights but from their position of vantage as a race.

Here I met an odd sort of article in the way of human ware. Only seventeen, he was twice my size, and lazy and pliable in proportion. He would come into my room and just stay. With a steady, piercing, yet stolid and almost epileptic stare, cunning, yet not shrewd, not steady, nor guided by any evident train of thought, he would watch me write. I was a mystery to him, and he frankly doubted the truth of things I told him.

First he said I had the build of a prize-fighter; then, perhaps on thinking it over, he doubted that I had ever done any hard work in my life. As to himself, he said he loved to break in wild horses. His father, according to one tale, was wealthy; two of his brothers were engineers on boats. But he hated study. He was altogether lacking in any notion of time, but he was not lazy. He was even ready to do work that was not his to do.

One afternoon he was in a most jovial mood. He was about to have a tent raised in which he would spend the summer, instead of the hotel room allotted to the help. He was full of glee at the prospect. Primitive instincts seemed to waken in him. But there was a sudden reaction,—whimsical. We had stepped upon the lawn which afforded an open view across Lake Rotorua.