are said to have been entered into between chiefs and traders, and the heads to have been duly delivered “as per agreement.”  Hitherto hung up as trophies of victory in the pas, these relics of battle were quickly turned to account, at first for iron, then for muskets, powder, and lead.  When the natural supply of heads of slain enemies ran short, slaves, who had hitherto never been allowed the aristocratic privilege and dignity of being tattooed, had their faces prepared for the market.  Sometimes, it is recorded, a slave, after months of painful preparation, had the audacity to run away with his own head before the day of sale and decapitation.  Astute vendors occasionally tried the more merciful plan of tattooing “plain” heads after death in ordinary course of battle.  But this was a species of fraud, as the lines soon became indistinct.  Such heads have often been indignantly pointed at by enthusiastic connoisseurs.  Head-sellers at times would come forward in the most unlikely places.  Commodore Wilkes, when exploring in the American Vincennes, bought two heads from the steward of a missionary brig.  It was missionary effort, however, which at length killed the traffic, and the art of tattooing along with it.  Moved thereby, Governor Darling issued at Sydney, in 1831, proclamations imposing a fine of forty pounds upon any one convicted of head-trading, coupled with the exposure of the offender’s name.  Moreover, he took active steps to enforce the prohibition.  When Charles Darwin visited the mission station near the Bay of Islands in 1835, the missionaries confessed to him that they had grown so accustomed to associate tattooing with rank and dignity—­had so absorbed the Maori social code relating thereto—­that an unmarked face seemed to them vulgar and mean.  Nevertheless, their influence led the way in discountenancing the art, and it has so entirely died out that there is probably not a completely tattooed Maori head on living shoulders to-day.

Cook had found the Maoris still in the Stone Age.  They were far too intelligent to stay there a day after the use of metals had been demonstrated to them.  Wits much less acute than a Maori’s would appreciate the difference between hacking at hardwood trees with a jade tomahawk, and cutting them down with a European axe.  So New Zealand’s shores became, very early in this century, the favourite haunt of whalers, sealers, and nondescript trading schooners.  Deserters and ship-wrecked seamen were adopted by the tribes.  An occasional runaway convict from Australia added spice to the mixture.

The lot of these unacknowledged and unofficial pioneers of our race was chequered.  Some castaways were promptly knocked on the head and eaten.  Some suffered in slavery.  In 1815 two pale, wretched-looking men, naked, save for flax mats tied round their waists threw themselves on the protection of the captain of the Active, then lying in the Bay of Islands.  It appeared that both had been convicts who had got