Chapter 32 - Page 2

sufficiency of moas in the old forgotten days when
his breed walked the earth. His bones are found in vast masses, all
crammed together in huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the
ground. Nobody knows how they happened to get concentrated there. Mind,
they are bones, not fossils. This means that the moa has not been
extinct very long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature which
has no mention in that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native
legends. This is a significant detail, and is good circumstantial
evidence that the moa has been extinct 500 years, since the Maori has
himself--by tradition--been in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth
century. He came from an unknown land--the first Maori did--then sailed
back in his canoe and brought his tribe, and they removed the aboriginal
peoples into the sea and into the ground and took the land. That is the
tradition. That that first Maori could come, is understandable, for
anybody can come to a place when he isn't trying to; but how that
discoverer found his way back home again without a compass is his secret,
and he died with it in him. His language indicates that he came from
Polynesia. He told where he came from, but he couldn't spell well, so
one can't find the place on the map, because people who could spell
better than he could, spelt the resemblance all out of it when they made
the map. However, it is better to have a map that is spelt right than
one that has information in it.

In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the
legislature, but they cannot be members themselves. The law extending
the suffrage to them event into effect in 1893. The population of
Christchurch (census of 1891) was 31,454. The first election under the
law was held in November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313;
number of women who voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us
that women are not as indifferent about politics as some people would
have us believe. In New Zealand as a whole, the estimated adult female
population was 139,915; of these 109,461 qualified and registered their
names on the rolls 78.23 per cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went
to the polls and voted--85.18 per cent. Do men ever turn out better than
that--in America or elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's
credit, too--I take it from the official report:

"A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the
people. Women were in no way molested."

At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that
women could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments
against woman suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The
prophets have been prophesying ever since the