"There's another tabu here, and that is on the ducks and other water-fowl that inhabit the lakes; and as no one is allowed to shoot them, they are in great numbers. The tabu was removed when the Duke of Edinburgh came here, and probably any one who would pay a high price could get it suspended long enough to allow him to satisfy his desires for shooting. But the tabu does not include trapping or netting, and we had roast ducks for dinner and luncheon on payment of a few shillings. There is a grand slaughtering festivity in December of each year, and this is the real reason of enforcing the tabu at other times.
"Sight-seeing places the world over are the cause of great demoralization to the people that live near them, and the Hot Lake district of New Zealand is no exception. The Maoris here are as rapacious as the hackmen at Niagara Falls, the guides and hotel-keepers at Rome, Naples, and hundreds of other places on the Continent, or the custodians of the Taj Mahal at Agra, or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. Every step we take has a fee of some kind attached to it, and they have even established a charge of five pounds (twenty-five dollars) for the privilege of taking photographs in the Hot Lake district. Miss Cumming, who wrote "At Home in Fiji" and other interesting books, tells how they tried to make her pay the photograph fee for taking sketches of the White Terraces and other curiosities during her visit. She resisted on the ground that a sketch was not a photograph; but they refused to listen to her excuses, and threatened to destroy her sketches unless she paid the sum demanded. She managed, however, to smuggle them away by concealing the sketches among some rugs, and leaving the district under the escort of a large party of English tourists.
[Illustration: MAORI VILLAGE OF WAIROA, IN THE HOT LAKE DISTRICT.]
"Wairoa is a pretty village with some two or three hundred inhabitants, most of them Maoris, and has a church, a school-house, and two hotels for the accommodation of tourists. The church and school are less prosperous than they used to be, as the natives are not as zealous in Christianity as when they were first converted. Soon after the Maori war broke out they hanged one of their pastors, and compelled another to flee to avoid the same fate.[7]