2/50 Around lay the Maori warriors sleeping, wrapped in their dyed mantles and with their spears stuck upright in the ground. Most of the scenes of that time which have come down to us were not of quietness. Some of them have been sketched in the last two chapters, and are examples of the condition of things which the missionaries landed to confront, and amidst which they worked. More have now to be described, if only to show things as they were before annexation, and the miseries which the country, and the Maori along with it, suffered before the influences of White adventurers and their fatal gifts were tempered by a civilized government. |