the school-house, of the usual anti-picturesque appearance, the landmark church already mentioned, bare and clean, and the native hall or meeting-house, which was no bad type of the native race in its present transitional condition; for its roof was of grey galvanised iron, while the barge-boards of its deep eaves were richly carved with the characteristic Maori patterns, and crowned by a very fine teko-teko (carved figure), with the customary grimacing face, protruding tongue of defiance, and gleaming pawa-shell eyes. Inside, matters were more purely native. Panels of scroll-work painted in harmonious dark-blue, crimson, and white, brightened the single, long, barn-like interior; rolls of mats and blankets indicated its use at night as a community bedroom; hanks of dressed flax glistened like white silk upon the walls, and a couple of pleasant-faced women, careless, for some cause, of the ship’s arrival, were busily weaving a mat. Even here, too, however, there were incongruous traces of the pakeha. Between two of the panels, there hung a Graphic picture of one “Adeliza,” highly coloured, golden-tressed, low-bodiced, very tight-laced; several cloth jackets richly trimmed with jet hung beside it, and a large swing looking-glass, such as more generally stands upon a dressing-table, decorated the floor in the neighbourbood of the two women and emphasised, slanderously, I trust, the proportions of the passing foot.
As to the private dwellings, they were the ordinary whares, of varying size, standing in separate plots of ground, with palings of brown punga (tree-fern stem) between them, and over the palings very brightly striped blankets flung forth, most sensibly,
