When Angas drew them, these Maori implements of war were used mostly for ceremonial purposes. fidelity. The accuracy of his drawing is amazing, and could have come only from an artist possessed of an intuitive and warmly sympathetic understanding of his subject. This is very apparent in his drawings of people, but it extends equally to the things which surrounded them: their domestic possessions, their houses and fortifications, and the great forests and mountains among which they lived.

Remarkable Understanding It is especially remarkable that he should have shown so sophisticated a comprehension of Maori sculpture, for in 1844 there were practically no Europeans who had any understanding of art of this kind. At the time of his visit there were still some carved and painted houses and monuments of the same quality as those which were the principal glory of pre-European Maori culture. Angas' lucid and lovingly detailed drawings recorded the splendour of these buildings just before they finally vanished. Writing of the Maori, Angas said that their character was ‘a strange mixture of pride, vanity … covetousness and generosity, passion and gentleness …’ It is their pride which is most apparent in his drawings: pride, and the kind of innocence which is possible only for a people who may have defeated each other, but who have never been defeated by outsiders.

Peace and Plenty They were a people: they walked and spoke with the dignity and whole-heartedness befitting the possessors of a rich land and a rich culture. The white men were a disturbing presence, but there were still only a few of them. They had at least brought peace to the country, and many new things which the Maori liked: pigs and blankets, axes and wheat. In these early days the peach, cherry, plum and quince trees flourished greatly; there was a space of time before the pests and blight followed the trees to their new home. In 1844 there was a kind of stillness in the land. It was the stillness before the storm: but seen from this distance, and especially as seen in the drawings of George French Angas, it seems to have been a happy time; almost, in a way, a kind of Golden Age. —M.O.