THE PASSING OF THE MAORI.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 162, 16 July 1907, Page 2

THE PASSING OF THE MAORI.

In taking part in a discussion which followed a lecture on "The Passing of the Maori," delivered by Archdeacon Walsh, Dr. Pomare, Chief Native Health Officr, expressed the opinion that the Maori was doomed not to extinction but to absorption. Nearly 80 per cent of the South/Iβland Maoris now have European blood in them, while the North Island Maoris also have a large admixture of pakeha blood. He did. not, however, believe the Maoris; would entirely die out, but the? future would find a new race, in whose veins would be commingled! the blood of Anglo-Saxon and Maori. Addressing the audience, Dγ Pomare thus continued in the poetio strain of the Maori:—"At the point where we two Aryan races diverged, you. had the good lack to turn westward. Yon were afraid of the sea in those days. My ancestors, having ho such fear, turned eastward, and we travelled on until we arrived to people the sunny isles of the great southern sea. Ton had the good luck in turning westward to come aoross the metal we buy. Keeping: eastward we were still in the stone age. Westward you met other people from whomyou learned in arts and soiences. Wβ met nought but inferior negroid races. Thus it was that when in the years to come we two branches of the same race met again, you were possessed of all which civilisation was able to lend you, while we were still a stone age people. The British have been slowly arriving at their state for hundreds, nay thousands of years. We have been brought into the fierce light of civilisation almost at a flash and it naturally takes time for a people to adapt themselves to new surroundings."