AMERICAN VIEW OF THE MAORI.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 486, 20 April 1909, Page 7

AMERICAN VIEW OF THE MAORI.

HARKING. BACK TO :?T?I>EET WEEK." NOTHING BUT PRAISE. ' Writing.. of ;liis visit to. Nev? ~ Zealand, Mr. Franklin Matthews, ail American journalist) who travelled with tho U.S. Fleett lias some nice thihgs to■ sajr-'ftbrtttt thb;Matfris:'; '1'- . . "Interesting as was. iirelclMrii®/* says lie, "the visitors'fauild'the 1 Natives theniEfllves much more interesting. The beauty of the women astonished them> They are chocolate iii ; colour.. .and', tlift younger, ones ,&tt lithe. Their ifeatures are almost' typically Grecian. Thoir eves are wonderfully bright; and they carry, themselves with .(ho air of Mobility. Tho men have long given lip tho practice of tattooing their faces. It' wiis marvellous how they Worked out thbse patterns. Some of tho women still.tattoo their lips and chilis. It now indicates a marriage inaft,"but it mars, the beauty of their faces wofully. They aro gradually giving up the custom and are beginning to sea "that they are more beautiful if they forego this painful • operation of staining their skins with, a shill and the indelible ink thty make from a root."Tho writer went, to RotorUa in a car where there was a young Maori matron of high rank. Like hundreds of the women, she was a graduate o£ the Maori College. She had as regular features asany Grecian liiaiden of,old, but her chin was stain&L ' You 'forgot it when she smiled and her,face light up with merriment. She was the life of the bah When she spoke it was. with as soft a. voice as was 6Wr given tb One of her sex. Her English was delightful in its pronunciation and the diction was absolutely free'from slang. '.;■■■ "She wore a Paris'hat arid it. was tied down with an automobile Veil. She had somo Of the Native embroidery oti liftr gown, and she wore diamonds fin her fingers. She told of the legends of her people. She, entered into delightful repartee from time to-time, but never a touch of tho colloquial in her large vocabulary—why, it was enough to make almost any man fall in love with her at first sight) tattooed chin' and hll, aiid you could understand' to some extent why the whites had intermarried with these people. She was a glorious oreature, refined, educated, vivacious, a borit aristocrat! One could then Understand wlij* these people hold themselves above ordinary folk. You can never get ono for a servant. They are now a petted race, and they hav. 1 come to presume that due honour will be pai'' to them simply .because they are the prou* people they arc. They feel they have tho right to be proud. . "Tho English liad. to compromiso with them. They are the aristocrats. And if you ever wish to hear speech spoken in the softest, richest, fiwsetest tones in the World, spend an hour in conversation with one of these, educated chieftainesses of Maoris iiild you'll never foi'get, it. You can also understand the. patriotism bV this nieh, whose proudest saying is: 'The death of the warrior is to die for the lalld!'"