If in these there is not the stuff for a fine book, then I am most strangely mistaken.

And if I have failed in the following pages, then let me hope that some fellow-countryman, and better craftsman, will come to the rescue, and will do with a firmer hand and a lighter touch the work attempted here.
NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT I have to thank Major-General Robley, not only for drawing the tail-piece to the second chapter, and thereby giving the book a minute but correct pattern of the Maori _moko_ or face-tattooing, but for kindly lending me photographs and drawings from which several other illustrations have been taken.

Two or three of the tail-pieces are after designs in Mr.Hamilton's _Maori Art_.

I have also to thank Mr.A.Martin of Wanganui for his kind permission to use his fine photograph of Mount Egmont and a view on a "papa" river.

Mr.W.F.
Crawford was good enough to put at my disposal his photograph of the Te Reinga waterfall, a view which will be new even to most New Zealanders.