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sexes seem of a superior order; all appear eager for improvement, full of energy, and indefatigably
industrious, and possessing amongst themselves several arts which are totally unknown to their
neighbours. 76
When viewed through the eyes of a Romanticist the perfect and pure forms of the body appear as
if painted by an artist from antiquity, and although the beauty of the human form, in his view, is
missing from contemporary society, it is still present in the “striking” and “graceful” figures of
the Maori who are reminiscent of the “fine models of antiquity” as they throw a mat or blanket
over their shoulders in toga-like fashion. 77 Dieffenbach too appreciates the “healthy and
symmetrical form of their bodies” and the “graceful and vigorous play of their muscles”, in which
the scene before him “offered an excellent study for an artist, or for an admirer of the human form
when neither impaired by an artificial state of life nor distorted by the arts of fashion” (I:262),
especially in the case of a chief at Te Awaiti, who is “of a fine powerfully formed figure, with a
noble countenance, and reminded us of a Roman tribune, wrapped, as he was, in a new native
toga” (I:57). Moreover, with their “prominent, but regular” features and skin colour, which is
sometimes “even lighter than that of a native of the south of France”, their feet, which are
uncovered and “in a healthy development”, in contrast to Europeans whereby “a native laughs at
our misshaped feet”, together with their self-possessed demeanour, which is “heightened by the
tattooing, which prevents the face from assuming the furrows of passion or the wrinkles of age”,
and their “easy, open, and pleasing” appearance (II:8f.), the Maori appear both unspoiled and
European-like. However, he does observe remnants of what appears to be a darker and somewhat
ill-proportioned race intermixed with the pure Polynesian stock, who, “although free men, […]
occupied the lower grades” (II:10). 78
Another popular train of thought at the time was that warmer climates, among other
things, led to idleness and laziness, whilst colder climates encouraged vigour and industriousness,
the latter of which reinforced the energy and productiveness of the British spirit for progress, as
well as, to a lesser extent, the Maori, who, compared to the Polynesians of the tropics, “show the
readiest disposition for assuming in a high degree that civilization which must be the link to
connect them with the European colonists, and ultimately to amalgamate them” (II:139). 79 This
76
Earle, Nine Months’ Residence, 85.
77
Ibid., 55.
78
Dieffenbach is here in agreement with earlier commentators who theorised a part-Melanesian origin for the Maori
through perceiving evidence of a separate and distinctly ‘inferior’, if not pre-existing, race blending in with the early
Polynesian immigrants (M. P. K. Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations: The Genesis of Some Pakeha Myths and
Legends. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1979, 41-44).
79
See Grant, “New Zealand ‘Naturally’”, 26f.; Howe, Nature, Culture, and History, 20, 32.
81