Abstract
THE title of this little book is somewhat misleading. Out of eight-and-twenty tales, only four are, properly speaking, Maori tales. The rest are stories of the contact between the Maories and the white settlers, traders and missionaries. Even the four Maori tales are retold in pakeha fashion, until there is little of the Maori left in them beyond the skeleton. The majority have already appeared in antipodean periodicals. They are all charmingly told, and, illustrating as they do many sides of the Maori character and the romance of earlier days of the colony, they form a worthy tribute to the noblest of savages, and cannot fail to rouse vivid feelings of regret that the race is doomed to extinction. Mr. Grace writes of the people and their surroundings with keen sympathy, the full secret of which is not disclosed until the last story, in which he relates an adventure of his early life as a missionary's son, when his mother and her children were rescued from an impending and horrible death by the unflinching courage and fidelity of a native chief. He has done well to preserve the narrative, as well as the other contents of this entertaining book, in a permanent form; but he himself would hardly claim scientific value for the collection.
Tales of a Dying Race.
By Alfred A. Grace. Pp. x + 250. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1901.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tales of a Dying Race . Nature 65, 389 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/065389a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/065389a0