We shall allude chiefly to the aborigines of New Zealand, giving also some details about the natives of the Sandwich Islands, as well as about the Tongas, or Friendly Islanders.
_New Zealanders._--The inhabitants of New Zealand, sometimes designated by the name of Maoris, are tall, robust, and of athletic frames. Their stature is generally from five feet seven inches to five feet eight inches, seldom lower, and their skin scarcely differs in colour from that of the people of the South of Europe. The expression of their countenance almost always indicates a gloomy ferocity. The face is oval, the forehead narrow, the eye large, black, and full of fire. The nose is sometimes aquiline, but oftener broad and flat, the mouth wide, the lips big, and beneath them rows of small, beautifully enamelled teeth.
The New Zealanders wear their hair long and falling in scattered locks over the face; chiefs alone take the trouble to comb it back on the head in a solitary tuft. It is rough and black, and seems occasionally reddish, because some individuals sprinkle it with powdered ochre.
Women who are not slaves possess strong vigorous figures, and are rarely under five feet and a few inches in height. The young girls have a broad face, masculine features, coarse lips frequently stained black by tattooing, a large mouth, flat nose, and uncombed hair hanging about them in disorder. Their bodies are disgustingly filthy, and impregnated with an odour of fish or of seal oil, which is revolting in the extreme.
They possess a few advantages as a set-off against the repulsiveness of this picture. The teeth of a New Zealand female are of excessive whiteness, and her black eyes beam with intelligence and fire, but household work and the birth of a family soon cause these attractions to disappear. The women have, moreover, the most deeply-rooted dirty habits. A thick layer of mud covers their bodies, which are nearly always smeared with seal or porpoise oil. Both sexes are capital swimmers.
There is little difference between the costume worn by males and females. The natives know how to weave very elegant textures from the fibres of the _Phormium tenax_ (or New Zealand flax), and a broad mat of this material floats carelessly over their shoulders and body, while another is wrapped round the waist, descending to the knee. In winter they throw over the former garment a thick, heavy cloak generally made from the peelings of a kind of osier, but which, in the case of chiefs, consists of dogskins sewn together. These fabrics are also varied in design, some being smooth and without any pattern, while others are covered with very delicate ornamentation. The slave girls stick unthreshed slips of the _Phormium tenax_ in their skirts, thus giving immoderate fulness to their bodies.