ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF NEW ZEALAND.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 32, 10 September 1869, Page 3

ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF NEW ZEALAND.

The London correspondent of the Melbourne 'Argus,' writes last week it was my good fortune to be present at a meeting of the Ethnological Society, at which Sir George Grey read an admirable paper on " The Social Life ox the Ancienb Inhabitants of New Zealand." He traced and illustrated the resemblance which appeared to him to exist between the social life of the Ancient New Zealanders and the Ancient Britons. Sir George Grey's papera left the conviction upon the audience that the Maories had attained to a much higher state of civilisation than was generally supposed. He read as a specimen of their literature an ancient New Zealand legend about a chief named Power, which kept his hearers hovering between tears and laughterHe narrated an anecdote of a New Zealand chief who complained to him that the English press misrepresented his people judging them all from two or three individuals, and adding that he believed if a fellow Maori, blind in one eye, should go to England, the papers there would inmediately say that all New Zealanders haii only only one eye. The Bishop of Wellington also addressed the Society on the ethnology of New Zealand, and interspersed his remarks with anecdotes. He told how a New Zealander had defended cannibalism to him, saving,— " The food of birds is bird food, the food of beasts is beast food, &c,, and. therefore, the food of man is man food." He also related that Queen Victoria some time ago asking Bishop Selwyn if the Maori women were pretty, he replied, " I will answer your Majesty a?? Captain Cook did your illustrious grandsire in respect to the Tahiti, women—they are quite pretty enough for the men." • ?