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ADVANCED AUSTRALIA

sion of a very fair proportion of their inheritance to-day. They are said, by those amusing gentlemen who theorise about races, to be the remote descendants of the early inhabitants of India, who, driven from that peninsula by the Aryans, learned navigation in Java and Borneo, and, driven again from there by the Malays, sailed all over the Pacific, and very likely to Mexico and Peru. In any case, a section, either of these Polynesians or of some other persons of the same name, amalgamated with the indigenes of Fiji, and their progeny, becoming a species of Normans of the Pacific, conquered Samoa, Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands, and finally New Zealand, where they arrived in a fleet of canoes about the year 1350. These are the folk, now called Maories, whom Mr S. Percy Smith, F.R.G.S., an authority on the subject, describes as "daring voyagers, in comparison with whom the most noted European navigators of the Middle Ages were mere coasters. The Polynesian chronicles relate voyages extending from Fiji to Easter Island, from New Zealand to the Hawaii group, and even to the Antarctic regions. They were never equalled as voyagers until the sixteenth century, which saw such an extension of nautical enterprise, originating in Europe." When the colony was first occupied by Europeans, the Maoris were found to be a brave and warlike nation, fighting for the love of conflict, and practising cannibalism for want of butchers' meat. Real swine being introduced to their notice, they readily gave up "long pig;" and when the wars between the British and Maoris took place at a later date, they acquitted themselves like men, making a gallant stand, often-times with success, against their better armed and better equipped adversaries. Now, "Nous avons changé tout cela" The Maori and the white man have, so to speak, coalesced, and live together in peace and amity. Gradually their