Nowhere have the comedy and childishness of savage life been so delightfully portrayed.

Nowhere else do we get such an insight into that strange medley of contradictions and caprices, the Maori's mind.
We have already seen that a lieutenant in Her Majesty's service thought it no crime in 1793 to kidnap two chiefs in order to save a little trouble.

We have seen how Cook shot natives for refusing to answer questions, and how De Surville could seize and sail away with a friendly chief because some one else had stolen his boat.

When in 1794 that high and distinguished body, the East India Company, sent a well-armed "snow" to the Hauraki gulf for kauri spars she did not leave until her captain had killed his quota of natives,--two men and a woman,--shot, because, forsooth, some axes had been stolen.

If such were the doings of officials, it came as a matter of course that the hard-handed merchant-skippers who in brigs and schooners hung round the coasts of the Islands thought little of carrying off men or women.
They would turn their victims adrift in Australia or on some South Sea islet, as their humour moved them.