The Maori orator dealt in quotations as freely as the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and his hearers caught them with as much relish as that of a House of Commons of Georgian days enjoying an apt passage from the classics.

Draped in kilt and mantle, with spear or carved staff of office in the right hand, the speakers were manly and dignified figures.

The fire and force of their rhetoric were not only aided by graceful gesture but were set out in a language worthy of the eloquent.

If we cannot say of the Maori tongue as Gibbon said of Greek, that it "can give a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy," we can at any rate claim for it that it is a musical and vigorous speech.

Full of vowel-sounds, entirely without sibilants, but rich in guttural and chest notes, it may be made at will to sound liquid or virile, soft or ringing.
The seamy side of Maori life, as of all savage life, was patent to the most unimaginative observer.