To begin with, they had to make the slender bird spears, thirty feet long, out of the light wood of the _tawa_ tree.

A single tree could provide no more than two spears, and the making of them--with stone tools of course--took many months.

Think of the dexterity, coolness and stealth required to manage such a weapon in a jungle so dense and tangled that white sportsmen often find a difficulty in handling their guns there! The silent adroitness needed to approach and spear the wild parrot or wood-pigeon without stirring the branch of a tree would alone require a long apprenticeship to wood-craft.
Maori house-building showed a knowledge of architecture decidedly above that of the builders of Kaffir kraals, to say nothing of the lairs of the Australian blacks.

The poorest huts were definitely planned and securely built.

The shape was oblong, the walls low, the roof high pitched and disproportionately large, though not so much so as in some of the South Sea Islands.