THE PASSING OF THE MAORI.

Bush Advocate, Volume XIX, Issue 776, 25 July 1907, Page 6

THE PASSING OF THE MAORI.

The Auckland correspondent of xliv C'hrlstchurch Press writes: — i In taking part in a discussion j which followed a lecture on "The Passing of the Maori," delivered by Archdeacon Walsh last night, Dr I\>mare (Chief Xnrive Health Officer) expressed the opinion that the Maori was doomed not to extinction but to i absorption. Nearly SO per cent of j tlie South Island Maoris now have European blood in them,, while the Xni'th U;iiul Maoris ulso Ihivc a large admixture of pokc-ha blood, 110 did not, however, believe the Maoris would entirely die out, but the future would find a new race, in whoso reins would be commingled the blood of Anglo-Saxon and Maori. Addressing the audience, Dr Pomare thus continued in the poetic strain of the Maori : "At the point where we two Aryan races diverged, you had the good luck to turn westward. You were afraid of tlie sea in those days. My ancestors, having no fear, turned eastward, and we travelled on until we arrived to people the sunny isles of this great southern sea. You had the good luck in turning westward to come across the metal avo buy. Keeping eastward, we were still in the stone age. Westward you met othf-r people from whom you learned in sciences mid arts. We met nought but inferior negroid races. Thus it was that when in the years to come we two branches

of the same race met a^ain. you wen possessed oi' all which civilian inn wa, iibJe to lend you, while we were stil | a sTiMH'-agc peopU 1 . The Briti.sl have been sl'.ujy au-iving :>t iiieii slate for hundreds, v.uy 'thousands, o years. .Wt- bad bwii hroii;;lu inU the fierce light oi' civilisation » linos', at a (his!), ami it. naturally lake; time i'cr a people t:> adapt tlieniseivc; to new surroundin.'-Cs." i