Without the aid of metals or pottery, without wool, cotton, silk or linen, without one beast of burden, almost without leather, they yet contrived to clothe, feed and house themselves, and to make some advance in the arts of building, carving, weaving and dyeing.
[Illustration: MAORI AND CARVED BOW OF CANOE] The labour and patience needed to maintain some degree of rude comfort and keep up any kind of organised society with the scanty means at their disposal were very great indeed.

The popular notion of the lazy savage basking in the sunshine, or squatting round the fire and loafing on the labour of his women, did not fairly apply to the Maori--at any rate to the unspoiled Maori.

As seen by the early navigators, his life was one of regular, though varied and not excessive toil.

Every tribe, in most ways every village, was self-contained and self-supporting.

What that meant to a people intelligent, but ignorant of almost every scientific appliance, and as utterly isolated as though they inhabited a planet of their own, a little reflection will suggest.