The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the Mission-bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off in the middle of his abuse: "Ah! I hear the bell!" and, turning, stalked out of the ring toward his pah, leaving it to be inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion, and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began their march toward the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation of their chiefs.
As we drove down to the coast, we talked over the close resemblance of the Maori runanga to the Homeric council; it had struck us all. Here, as in the Greek camp, we had the ring of people, into which advanced the lance-bearing or scepter-bearing chiefs, they alone speaking, and the people backing them only by a hum: "The block of wood dictates not to the carver, neither the people to their chiefs," is a Maori proverb. The boasting of ancestry, and bragging of deeds and military exploits, to which modern wind-bags would only casually allude, was also thoroughly Homeric. In Hunia we had our Achilles; the retreat of Hunia to his wahré was that of Achilles to his tent; the cause of quarrel alone was different, though in both cases it arose out of the division of spoil, in the one case the result of lucky wars, in the other of the Pakéha's weakness. The Argive and Maori leaders are one in fire, figure, port, and mien; alike, too, even in their sulkiness. In Waitéré and Aperahama Tipai we had two Nestors; our Thersites was Porea, the jester, a half-mad buffoon, continually mimicking the chiefs or interrupting them, and being by them or their messengers as often kicked and cuffed. In the frequency of repetition, the use of proverbs and of simile, the Maories resemble not Homer's Greeks so much as Homer's self; but the calling together of the people by the heralds, the secret conclave of the chiefs, the feast, the conduct of the assembly--all were the exact repetition of the events recorded in the first and second books of the "Iliad" as having happened on the Trojan plains. The single point of difference was not in favor of the Greeks; the Maori women took their place in council with the men.