The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1883.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LX, Issue 6998, 3 August 1883, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1883.

A Paeliambntaby paper worthy of much interest, bat whioh receives little, is the collection of reports laid yearly before Parliament from officers in charge of the Native districts. These reports, which, by-the*way, make no mention of the condition of the Natives in this island, give the latest, and presumably most authentic, information as to the morel, physical and material state of the North Island Maoris, Hence, they are to ho studied by those few in this part of New Zealand to whom the present and future of the Maori race is not a matter of utter indifference. On one most important point the reports are one and ell silent. They say not a word as to the relative increase or decrease in numbers of the various tribes. To the question therefore, " Are the Natives dying out P” they give no sort of answer. Mr Yen Sturger, Resident Magistrate of Hekianga, states that the number of births in that district has been, as far as ooold be ascertained, slightly in excess of the deaths. The former bo gives at 47, the latter 41. At Hokianga, then, it would seem that the decay of the race bad been, for the time at all events, arrested. As no statistics are given of the birth and death rates among other tribes, all that can be said is that doctors differ on the point now as formerly. One well-informed expert will declare that there is a rapid falling off j another equally experienced person that the tribes are keeping up their numbers. From a medical point of view there should be. Judging from these reports, no especial reason lor decline, as officer after officer testifies to the exceptionallygood health recently enjoyed by the Natives in this part of tho Jeland. Particularly would this seem to he the case at Hokianga, Wangarel, and Mongonui; all places, be it observed, to the north of Auckland. As the land in that extreme of New

Zealand la moatly too poor to tempt the apeculator, it may bo that the Ngapuhi and other tribes of the far North have, through the very poverty of their soil, a bettor chance of ultimate sarvival than their richer bat tees for* innate cousins farther soath. Drunken* nose is reported to ho less prevalent than formerly,exoeptinoneortwo places where land aslce and Land Ooarte are exercising their demoralising laflaefioce. Possibly It is this Increase in so* brialy which accounts for the general improvement in health, an improve* ment difficult to account for in any other way; certainly improved sanitary preoaations have nothing to do with it, for the reports are filled with lameuta* lions at the obstinacy of the Natives in adhering to all that is bad in the customs of their ancestors. If the Maori does not cling to bis soil quite so obstinately as formerly, bis soil may, in one sense, bo said to cling to him as tenaoionsly as ever, for in the way of dirt tbo Maori is the most thorough el conservatives. To dirt and the absence of the commonest preoaations In, the way of ventilation and drainage, also to impnre drinking water, the fever, which appears now to be their principal enemy, is attributed. The Opotiki Magistrate (Mr Bush) is very emphatic on this, and also upon the difficulty, amounting almost to impossibility, of inducing the Natives when ill to follow the direction of the Government doctors. Like most savages, they are fatalists in their way of looking at disease, and generally attribute its origin to some superhuman cause, against which it is vain to etraggle. They allow themselves to be vaccinated, however, and that is something to the good. One very pronounced blot on the otherwise tolerably cheerful picture is the growing dislike shown by m?ny of the Natives to cultivating their own lands. This does not seem to spring from sheer idleness and slothful abhorrence of toil. The Natives will work for wages readily enough. In the North they dig for kauri gum, and find employment in timber cutting. In other place* they hire themselves out at road-makers, and on several parts of the coast form associations lor the purpose of purchasing the equipment necessary for whaling; on which they are as ready to enter as in days of eld. But farm their own lands they will not, except to a very insufficient extent. The Wairoa Valley, for instance, is described by the Magistrate of Hokianga as being largo and fertile enough to support a population of 2000 if properly cultivated, yet last winter the 250 Natives possessing it found famine knocking at their doors, as the result of their negleot to grow enough during the previous summer to support them throngh the winter seasoi. The Natives, it is to be supposed, prefer the direct return which the payment of wages gives for their labour to the slow and indirect profit to be gained hy agriculture. One gives the money which they can spend and waste as they please, the other only gives them food. It is pleasant to notice that the best accounts come from the older settled districts, and the worst from places like Taupo and Botorua, where close contact with Europeans is comparatively a new thing. This looks as though the Maori has, after all, some power of surviving the first shook which intercourse with the white settlers always gives to his moral being. As kauri-gum diggings become exhausted, and piece-work in the bosh less highly paid, as some land is sold and some rendered inalienable, the Maori will, it is to be trusted, spend less time in loafing about the purliens of Land Courts, and supporting a hand-to-mouth existence on chance jobs from white employers. He will, if he eventually survives, learn chat farming his own good land is after all the most profitable thing to which he can turn his hand. The best, and Indeed the only hope for the race, lies in their gradually overcoming their natural dislike to steady agricultural labour. At present the prospect in this direction is not particularly reassuring. But if the Maori oan improve in the matter of sobriety, who shall say what he cannot do? Ho can, at any rate, do more than the Anglo-Saxon has done in this boasted Province of Canterbury, where, according to official figures, drunkenness is increasing every day.