The infinite patience and delicacy requisite in their bird-snaring and spearing are almost beyond the conception of the civilized townsmen untrained in wood-craft. To begin with, they had to make the slender bird spears, thirty feet long, out of the light wood of the tawa tree. A single tree could provide no more than two spears, and the making of them—with stone tools of course—took many months. Think of the dexterity, coolness and stealth required to manage such a weapon in a jungle so dense and tangled that white sportsmen often find a difficulty in handling their guns there! The silent adroitness needed to approach and spear the wild parrot or wood-pigeon without stirring the branch of a tree would alone require a long apprenticeship to wood-craft.
Maori house-building showed a knowledge of architecture decidedly above that of the builders of Kaffir kraals, to say nothing of the lairs of the Australian blacks. The poorest huts were definitely planned and securely built. The shape was oblong, the walls low, the roof high pitched and disproportionately large, though not so much so as in some of the South Sea Islands. The framework was of the durable totara-wood, the lining of reeds, the outside of dried rushes. At the end turned to the sunshine was a kind of verandah, on to which opened the solitary door and window, both low and small. The floor was usually sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than one room under a single roof. On the other hand, the dyed patterns on the reed wainscoting, and the carvings on the posts, lintel and boards, showed real beauty and a true sense of line and curve.
Still less reason is there to find fault with their canoes, the larger of which were not only strangely picturesque, but, urged by as many as a hundred paddles, flew through the water at a fine speed, or under sail made long coasting voyages in seas that are pacific only in name. To the carving on these crafts the savage artists added decoration by red ochre, strips of dyed flax, gay feathers and mother-o'-pearl. Both the building of the canoes and their adornment entailed long months of labour. So did the dressing of the fibre of the flax and palm-lily, and the weaving therefrom of "mats" or mantles, and of kirtles. Yet the making of such ordinary clothing was simple indeed compared to the manufacture of a chief's full dress mat of kiwi feathers. The soft, hairy-looking plumage of the kiwi (apteryx) is so fine, each feather so minute, that one mantle would occupy a first-rate artist for two years. Many of these mantles, whether of flax, feathers or dog-skin, were quaintly beautiful as well as warm and waterproof.
Nor did Maori skill confine itself to ornamenting the clothing of man. The human skin supplied a fresh and peculiar field for durable decoration. This branch of art, that of Moko or tattooing, they carried to a grotesque perfection. Among the many legends concerning their demi-god Maui, a certain story tells how he showed them the way to tattoo by puncturing the muzzle of a dog, whence dogs went with black muzzles as men see them now. For many generations the patterns cut and pricked on the human face and body were faithful imitations of what were believed to be Maui's designs. They were composed of straight lines, angles, and cross-cuts. Later the hero Mataora taught a more graceful style which dealt in curves, spirals, volutes and scroll-work. Apart from legend it is a matter of reasonable certitude that the Maoris brought tattooing with them from Polynesia. Their marking instruments were virtually the same as those of their tropical cousins; both, for instance, before the iron age of the nineteenth century, often used the wing-bones of sea-birds to make their tiny chisels. Both observed the law of tapu under which the male patients, while undergoing the process of puncturing, were sacred, immensely to their own inconvenience, for they had to dwell apart, and might not even touch food with their hands. As to the source of the peculiar patterns used by the New Zealanders, they probably have some relation with the admirable wood-carving before mentioned. Either the Moko artists copied the style of the skilful carvers of panels, door-posts, clubs, and the figure-heads on the prows of canoes, or the wood-carvers borrowed and reproduced the lines and curves of the Moko. The inspiration of the patterns, whether on wood or skin, may be found in the spirals of sea-shells, the tracery on the skin of lizards and the bark of trees, and even, it may be, in the curious fluting and natural scroll-work on the tall cliffs of the calcareous clay called papa.
But, however the Moko artist learned his designs, he was a painstaking and conscientious craftsman in imprinting them on his subject. No black-and-white draughtsman of our time, no wood-cutter, etcher, or line-engraver, worked with slower deliberation. The outlines were first drawn with charcoal or red ochre. Thus was the accuracy of curve and scroll-work ensured. Then, inch by inch, the lines were cut or pricked out on the quivering, but unflinching, human copper-plate. The blood was wiped away and the narahu (blue dye) infused. In the course of weeks, months, or years, as leisure, wealth, or endurance permitted, the work was completed. In no other society did the artist have his patron so completely at his mercy. Not only was a Moko expert of true ability a rarity for whose services there was always an "effective demand," but, if not well paid for his labours, the tattooer could make his sitter suffer in more ways than one. He could adroitly increase the acute anguish which had, as a point of honour, to be endured without cry or complaint; or he could coolly bungle the execution of the design, or leave it unfinished, and betake himself to a more generous customer. A well-known tattooing chant deals with the subject entirely from the artist's standpoint, and emphasises the business principles upon which he went to work. It was this song that Alfred Domett (Robert Browning's Waring) must have had in his mind when, in his New Zealand poem, he thus described the Moko on the face of the chief Tangi-Moana:—
"And finer, closer spirals of dark blue
Were never seen than in his cheek's tattoo;
Fine as if engine turned those cheeks declared
No cost to fee the artist had been spared;
That many a basket of good maize had made