The residences of the chiefs are built upon the ground, and have
generally the floor, and a small space in front, neatly paved; but they
are so low that a man can stand upright in very few of them. The huts,
as well as the storehouses, are adorned with carving over the door.

One of the arts in which the New Zealanders most excel is that of
carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt,
grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity
which, especially when we consider their miserably imperfect tools, it
is impossible to behold without admiration. This is one of the arts
which, even in civilized countries, does not seem to flourish best in a
highly advanced state of society. Even among ourselves, it certainly is
not at present cultivated with so much success as it was a century or
two ago.

Machinery, the monopolizing power of our age, is not well fitted to the
production of striking effects in this particular branch of the arts.
Fine carving is displayed, as in the works of Gibbons, by a rich and
natural variety, altogether opposed to that faultless and inflexible
regularity of operation which is the perfection of a machine. Hence the
lathe, with all the miraculous capabilities it has been made to evolve,
can never here come into successful competition with the chisel, in so
far as the quality and spirit of the performance are concerned; but the
former may, nevertheless, drive the latter out of the market, and seems
in a great measure to have done so, by the infinitely superior facility
and rapidity of its operation. Hence the gradual decay, and almost
extinction among us, of this old art, of which former ages have left us
so many beautiful specimens. It is said to survive now, if at all, not
among our artists by profession, whose taste is expended upon higher
objects, but among the common workmen of our villages, who have pursued