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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue XVI, 28 July 1881, Page 1

Occasionally reports of Bharp doings and 'cute practices amongst "our d usky brethren" reach us from various parts of New Zealand, but to our mind the perpetration of one of the cleverest Maori swindles of the day (if indeed a dishonest act can ever be regarded as "clever") has been reserved (says the Waipawa Mail), fov a well-known chief living not a thousand miles from Takapau. Our information is to the effect that on a receni date the aforementioned chief negotiated a sale, of some property, in which a second Native had also an interest equal to that of the yenddr. The price allowed for the property was duly r paid by the purchaser in notes-i-some being single notes and some "fivers." Whether due to that advance of intellect so apparent in this nineteenth century, or to contact with the enlighted pakeha, we know nojfc, but the circumstance of the outward similarity of bank notes of very different denominations struck this benighted brother as a most fortunate one f>r making fraudulent capital out oi his less intelligent partner. Accordingly he set to work " sorting " his notes, or in other words, alternating a Birigle note and a fiver, so far as the latter denomination would 'go, Then, with a sang froid which would, have done. credit to a down-east Yankee, this convert to European civilisation sought out his victim and carelessly' erkhibited the ulu. It was soon, arranged that a division of the amount should be made in the " one for you ; one for me" style, so much in vogue with Natives, and the pair, haying crouched down, operations commenced, the teller* however, taking care to place all the fivers on his own pile. So far as we can learn, the.fraud has never yet been discovered by the duped one, and both parties are proportionately satisfied. Among the statistics of work accomplished by foreign missions during tlu past century are these : Converts from heathenism, 1,500,000; languages into whj'ch.the Bible has been trauslated,2s6; copies of the Bible circulated, 148,00O,OOOj; barbarous languages endowed with grammar and literature, 70. An Auckland contemporay observes that the total value of all the whisky imported, into New Zealand in 1880 was £61,901, and it paid in duty £143,639 ! Roughly speaking, for the privilege of drinking three pennyworth of whisky {actual value) a man pays the Stdte more than sixpence. Gin is equally profitable; £41,630 worth cleared for home; consumption yieldecl to the. Colouial TVea-