boat shares; study the law of contracts, and pass in political economy. To "turn in a dead eye" is as defunct an accomplishment as dancing a minuet, and "shiver my timbers" is a phrase of no meaning, in these days of iron ships and steel steamers. Some little timber trade is still done at Whangaroa, and there is a large native settlement, but the roystering days of the whaling industry are gone, never to return.
There are few lights on this part of the New Zealand coast, a lack which badly wants supplying. As I write, there is a gathering of over five hundred natives assembled at Whangarei, another northern port, for the purpose of indulging in one of their famous war-dances. Nothing could more forcibly mark the difference between these latter days and the former order of things, when feasts of human flesh were the accompaniment of these orgies, than the fact that now this gathering is extensively advertised. Steamers are specially put on to make the run, and take up large numbers of curious sightseers, who throng to see the war-dance, as they would to any ordinary exhibition. This may be less romantic from the novel-reader's point of view, but surely it is well that over the old ruthless savagery "Ichabod" should be written. 'Tis pity though, that the lust for fire-water and the vulgar thirst for beer, should all so easily have formed the modern substitute for that fierce craving for human blood, which was wont to rouse the Maori nature to verge of madness.
All the night, on through the darkness our
