Native News.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 1449, 8 September 1885, Page 4

Native News.

An observant traveller who has lately been " doing the North" makes the following terse remark on the decadence of the Maori Race : — " I have heard mncl» gush abont the Maoris being a ' splendid race, 1 ' ' the finest aboriginals m tho world,' etc., but have never seen anything m them to warrant any such extravagant use of language. To me they se3m indolent, dirty, and cruel, and so far as their physical stamina is concerned it is a minus quantity. They are a dying race, true, hut why ? ♦ Contact with the white race,' say you ? Not so ; civilisation has not communicatf d to them any disease or any habits half so fatal as their own interminable war", which decimated and destroyed whole tribes m their bloody combats, and besides, the Maori is not drunken or licentious he is simply lazy. Before the advent of the European he was compelled to cultivate the ground -or to fish, for he was without flesh food. He was forced to walk, for he had no horses. He must needs pikau his plunder, for he had no beasts of burden. Now all is changed. He never walks, he is never seen with a pikau, he has no training as a warrior, he is as adverse to water as an Italian lazzerone. and, naturally he dies. I may be all wrong m this diagnosis of the Maori matter but, as it me, so I write it down."