1971 - Sharp, A (ed.) Duperrey's visit to New Zealand in 1824. - [Lesson, R. P. Voyage autour du monde...] p 51-108

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EXTRACT FROM

Voyage autour du monde... sur la corvette La Coquille

(Voyage round the world on the corvette La Coquille)

RENE PRIMAVERE LESSON

A note on Lesson's book is given in the Introduction (pp 21, 23). The New Zealand section, translated by Diana Quarmby, comprises the immediately following section of the present book.

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CHAPTER XXI

Crossing from Port Jackson to New Zealand (from the 20th of March to the 3rd of April) and visit to the Bay of Islands (from the 3rd of April to the 17th of the same month)

On the 20th of March 1824, in fine weather, we lost sight of the coast of New South Wales and our corvette set sail for New Zealand. Rain, strong winds, and the long South Pole swell made this short crossing a tiresome one. On the 30th we were caught by an easterly gale which forced us to heave to for three days, to the great discomfort of Mr Clerk and his wife, 1 whom we had taken on at Port Jackson as passengers for the Bay of Islands, with two New Zealanders. Mr Clerk, Methodist missionary, had a beautiful dog which he called Tipo, in contempt of that fine name, Tipo-Saeb, borne with honour by a warlike Indian whose open enmity threatened the power of the English. 2 The two New Zealanders were extremely displeased whenever Mr Clerk happened to call Tipo. In the end they informed him that unless he changed this name he would get on badly in New Zealand, for the great warrior Tipo would take this prostitution of his name on an animal as a personal insult. So the missionary was obliged to change the name of his hound to avoid giving offence to its New Zealand namesake.

On the 1st of April a phaeton 3 appeared, lost or driven by some storm -- no longer a harbinger of the tropics he had left behind, but quite the odd man out among a throng of little petrels which trod the waters of our wake. On the 2nd the shores of New Zealand came into view, and we were greeted by the bleak, still peaks of de Surville's Lauriston Bay. 4 We sailed about ten leagues along the coast, and during the morning of the 3rd we found ourselves at the entrance to Marion Bay 5 or the Bay of Islands, not far from Pocock Point and two miles from the Sentinel, a large, cone-shaped rock which rises above the sea

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like an old bastion. 6 It was a dismal day, the sky obscured by thick, black clouds, the sea choppy, the mountains jagged and sparsely wooded; everything united to give this immense bay a wild and melancholy appearance. The SE winds forced us to tack in order to reach an anchorage; we rounded Motou-Arohia and dropped anchor behind Motou-Roouo. 7 Taifanga, one of the New Zealanders we had taken on at Sydney, who had never seen ships anchoring at this spot, kept on shouting 'Danger! Shipwreck!' and he was astonished to see us resting calmly in ten fathoms over a bottom of sandy silt. Even before the sails were furled the bridge was invaded by wave upon wave of islanders; we tried to post sentries, but in vain -- the dam was broken without our being able to diminish the zeal of the new arrivals. The ferocious appearance of our new acquaintances, their full tattooing, did not inspire us with a lively affection for them and we maintained an attitude of discreet aloofness. Before long a native in European dress came on board. He spoke English, having spent some time in England, where he and the chief Terri had been taken by the brig Kangaroo, and he introduced himself to us. 8 Toui, brother of the famous Korokoro, whom he had succeeded as chief of the Kaouera i-pah, 9 was the bearer of numerous English and American certificates which testified to the service he had rendered to various navigators, and from that moment on he was everybody's pet. Toui told us that when he had been in London he had helped to give some of the information on the New Zealand language contained in the grammar edited by Mr Kendall, but arranged and revised by Professor Lee. 10 He also persuaded us to shift anchorage and go closer to his fortified village or i-pah. M. Bérard 11 was instructed to sound the channel off the long headland of Orokaoua 12 and the corvette La Coquille was towed to a spot off Kaouera, 13 in eight fathoms of water over a bottom of fine sand.

From our first day there the corvette swarmed with natives and a thriving trade was established on board, but I must confess, with some

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embarrassment, that the market was animated neither by provisions nor curiosities. The New Zealanders initiated a traffic which they found more lucrative, since without capital outlay they derived from it, I will not say fair profits, but at least pecuniary advantage. Canoes arrived crammed (the word is not too strong) full of women, and our bridge was overrun with swarms of girls; for the seventy-man crew, more than a hundred and fifty samples of this unorthodox merchandise came like a flock of ewes in search of buyers. The captain tried to get rid of this lascivious livestock, but to no avail -- for every ten females who left from one side of the ship twenty more clambered up the other; we were obliged to give up trying to enforce a measure that so many people were concerned to infringe. Poets represent the divine Venus on a chariot carved from a sea-shell; our Coquille, 14 throughout our stay at the Bay of Islands, became her temple, and her altars were raised on our orlop. 15 The men quite artlessly and without any sense of shame held out their hands to receive the profits, and took from the girls everything their lovers had given them. Before long we obtained proof that these girls, so brutally prostituted, were slaves taken after the sacking of their villages and in the savage wars which the different tribes wage among themselves.

As night came on only fifty or so of these females remained on board, having become an integral part of the crew. They were kind enough to repay their cordial reception with games and dances. The girls grouped themselves on the quarter-deck, up to the gangways, and there they formed two lines and abandoned themselves to a transport of mimicry, accompanying themselves with songs and gestures, whose meaning was abundantly clear. A feast of Lampsacus in all its nakedness! And yet the parents of these unfortunate creatures had been killed and even eaten by their barbarous proprietors. Victims of greed, they were thrown into the arms of the seamen to obtain the slightest trifles. Most of them were only fifteen to twenty years old, and there were some of less than nine or ten summers, but nearly all of them were ugly, dirty, and reeking of rotten fish and garbage which revolted the senses. However, I was able to convince myself that the seamen were not repelled by the smell of decomposed porpoise given out by their girdles, and more than one of our sailors caught disgusting bugs and worse from those fishy loin-cloths. Only one or two of these New Zealanders had pleasant features, but even if they were not very pretty their skin was smooth and quite clear, and their bosoms as lovely as one could hope to find. No bodice to distort that part, no binding to

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retain the spheres; and these charms were slow to fade. Temporary unions were contracted, and these unhappy girls showed themselves to be faithful. Others followed the erotic tastes of their first possessors. Of course we feared disputes on board in the midst of this general licentiousness, but there were none, thank God, and our expedition did not renew the scandal of Cook's officers, who fought many a duel for their savage Helens. 16 To complete this revolting festival, our seamen regaled these antipodean beauties from their own platters, but my stomach still turns over when I remember the greed with which they scooped up the bits of food which overflowed on to the deck, licking them up and fighting for them with the pigs we had on board. Once a bowl of rice was spilt on the deck, and seven or eight girls threw themselves down flat on their stomachs and left not a grain on the planks. Their tongues served as swabs, and the wood took on a most unaccustomed lustre from the repeated scouring. Travellers who wrote that the New Zealanders prostituted their wives were wrong. Marital fidelity is, without being religiously observed, at least infringed at peril in great secrecy. The New Zealand women who visited us with their husbands answered the solicitations to which they were subjected with a gesture of disgust, accompanied by the word tabou, by which they expressed the idea that their bodies were sacred and that since any breach of marital fidelity would result in death they were bound to preserve their honour.

The life of the young slaves with their ferocious masters is never secure. Their impassivity and their carefree ways are merely signs of the moral degradation produced by the disgrace they have fallen into. The hideous warriors, steeped in the blood of the fathers and relatives of their captives, keep them so that they may traffic in their youthfulness, but they often beat them for mere trifles, and sometimes even kill them. Toui's wife had brought with her a young girl, beautifully built, whom she intended for some officer, and, vexed to see her come back on to the bridge without having made a conquest, she beat her savagely. Toui himself has not profited from his trip to Europe, for he was open to the contempt that Mercuries of gallantry deserve, and had nothing, apart from a certain fatuity, to show for his long stay at Port Jackson and his visit to London. He recounted to anyone who would listen the favours he had received from the daughter of a well-known missionary in Australia.

The chief I have just mentioned had installed himself on board, and M. d'Urville hoped to get valuable information from him through the medium of the English language. We are acquainted with Toui's letters, published under his name by Mr Marsden in the Missionary

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Register, 17 but Toui averred that, being unable to read or write, he had no idea what the missionaries had been pleased to pass off under his name. He was a man of medium build, about thirty years old, with an elegantly tattooed face; his manners were common and very stiff in the European dress he wore when with us. He is the only islander to have learned enough English to be able to carry on a conversation even about the most everyday things. Apart from that, having a reputation for being a mediocre warrior, in a country inhabited by the most warlike race on earth, Toui was not thought much of outside his own i-pah. Korokoro was alive when Toui, his brother, and Teiterei 18 left for Europe as very young men. They bowed but slightly to the ways of civilised life, and on their return in 1822 they completely rejected the usages which had scarcely touched them. When he returned Toui, the third brother of Korokoro, succeeded to the power of that chief who had been renowned as Shongi's equal and rival in bravery, 19 for his second brother had been killed in his absence, in a war won by the Paréa 20 tribe. Korokoro's widow was still living at the time of our visit, and I often saw her, her body and face torn by shark teeth according to the custom of inconsolable widows, although Korokoro's death had occurred nine months before. Toui had a fourth brother, a rather insignificant personage, who was nevertheless respected for his family background, as his ancestors had been arikis or high priests. 21 This chief, who had been somewhat unusually given a five-gun salute when he came on board La Coquille, never left the ship, where he supervised his business of trading living flesh for gunpowder and axes, always hoping to get muskets, the only things these people really want. He left the vessel for only a few hours to go to Kaouera, the fortified i-pah, which is established on a high hill on the eastern branch of Shoal Bay. 22

It was not until the 4th that canoes arrived to bring foodstuffs on board. One of these vessels was directed by a person of high repute, the high priest or ariki of Toui's tribe. 23 In spite of his priestly status, his imposing bearing, his haughty features, and his traditional robes of fine flax mats, the high priest lost his prestige when he tried to sell us four pigs. Our attitude towards him, based on European standards, changed from respect to contempt. We asked Toui if this savage Calchas, so

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esteemed by his people, and so influential over the fate of his tribe, gave infallible judgments. 'He's a big dunce,' replied Toui, 'but his father was an able man' -- a reply with all the marks of civilisation, where the dead are exalted and the living belittled, all in a spirit of impartiality! All the same the arikis play an important part in New Zealand; they are the ones who decide when battles are to be fought, promising success or the reverse; they are the ones who butcher the prisoners, keeping admittedly the best morsels for themselves; they are both surgeons of the body and healers of the soul. We nicknamed this high priest the pig-dealer because he went back on shore ten times before deciding to part with his merchandise, and in the end delivered only two animals for six pounds of gunpowder. Of civilisation and the arts it has nursed, the New Zealanders admire only the invention of firearms. These represent for them the highest achievement of the human spirit; all their ambition is directed towards finding a way to get hold of them, and it is understood that the tribe which possesses the most guns has a decided advantage over the others. The chief of a far-off district offered us forty pigs for a double-barrelled gun, but he brought only twenty on board and was sent away without any business being concluded. We would certainly have gained on the deal, as the gun, issued for the natural history collections, was a very poor one. Blue-glass bead necklaces were greatly prized by the women, who brought us in exchange parcels of the magnificent New Zealand linen, ready to be made up. 24 For powder they would bring mats they had made from thread which was silky and strong as silk. These mats are of different weights according to whether they are for use as cloaks or skirts, and they are most artistically worked and remarkable for the patterns with which they are decorated. These islanders did not greatly prize European clothes, preferring woollen blankets to drape themselves in, but our patience was once more tried in bringing these deals to a conclusion, so slow were they to come to a decision and so swift to seize every circumstance which could be turned to their advantage. When they thought they had tricked a buyer, they would salute him with an exaggerated ka-pai, a word which simply means 'good', but delivered with an indescribably cunning expression. The European objects they valued were, after guns and powder, axes, unworked woollen and cotton fabrics, big blue-glass beads, strong fish-hooks, and flints, but they were not interested in knives or any sort of metal instrument.

This is a good port of call for provisioning ships after a long voyage. Fishing expeditions are so pleasant and fish so abundant that the natives give away enormous quantities of it in exchange for trifles. Our men

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ate as much of it as they wanted, and were able to salt some down for the voyage. Add to this the excellent vegetables which grow easily in the humus which forms the floor of the valleys -- cabbages, very large, tender turnips, horse-radishes, sweet potatoes, small but delectable, celery in abundance all along the shore, and you begin to form an idea of the advantages of such a stopover for navigators who need to reprovision their ships. This explains the great number of English and American whaling ships which enter or leave the vast Bay of Islands every day.

On the 5th we were visited by two strange canoes, which in spite of being hollowed out of a single piece of wood were more than forty feet long. They had on board a large number of islanders with their wives and daughters. None of the women came on board the corvette, but waited in the canoes for their husbands or fathers. Although these islanders were at peace with the people of the Kaouera tribe, they were armed with guns and patous-patous. 25 I bought some of the jade fetishes 26 and shark teeth which they wear hanging round their necks and seldom take off, and then only if the object found on the battlefield does not represent a victory, or is not a family jewel or the image of their particular god. I also obtained a jade toki or axe, which was as remarkable for the polish and beauty of the stone as for the carvings which decorated the handle. A man who is very well known in Paris borrowed this rare and curious object and I have never seen it since. I had taken good care to buy gunpowder at Toulon, so I was able to complete my collection of valuable objects for the Museum, 27 especially as the demonstration of this powder enclosed in tin boxes greatly impressed the natives with its force. Thus on this day I obtained three New Zealand heads 28 preserved by the admirable method of these peoples, far superior to anything the Europeans have attempted in the field of mummification. One of these heads had been hidden under a young girl's skirt, and she held this hideous toy with complete indifference. She took it by the hair to demonstrate its soundness and turned it in all directions so that I could admire the regularity of its rich tattooing. This severed head seemed to be that of a sleeping man, for the eyelids were closed and sewn down, and the mouth, half open and withered on the fine teeth, seemed to be still imprinted with the sardonic laugh of the warrior who defies his enemies and the death which has come to him.

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This day we were visited by the famous Shongi, 29 whose reputation for intrepidity and courage reigned over the surroundings of the vast Bay of Islands. Shongi commands the districts to the north and west of this bay, but the main i-pah where he resides is on the bank of the Kiddi-Kiddi River, not far from the high waterfall from which it takes its name. 30 It is here that the Protestant missionaries have established their headquarters, under the protection of this formidable warrior. The New Zealanders who made up Shongi's escort were tall men of Herculean build, in the prime of life. One of them, famous for the number of enemies he had killed with his own hands, was Pomare, 31 whom Toui had nicknamed Raki Panapati, 32 as a sign of his high esteem. 33

Shongi permitted his companions to favour us with the spectacle of a war-dance, and never, even on the battlefield, can more ferocious and barbaric expression have been given to this Pythian display, all the movements of which are carried out with astonishing precision. It was a sight to see -- these ferocious islanders rolling their flashing eyes rhythmically, the eyeballs turning in the sockets so that only the whites could be seen, while their choked voices throbbed and sobbed or roared like those of tigers. The most bloody passions, brutal force, the death rattle of the vanquished, his agony, his death, his flesh roasted and devoured, formed a terrifyingly realistic picture. Shongi smiled gently at this hymn of triumph, the notes of which he had many times heard mingled with the cries of enemies massacred at his orders and roasted by his tribesmen.

Shongi, by means of feigned gentleness and studied courtesy towards Mr Marsden and the first missionaries to whom he had offered refuge at Kiddi-Kiddi, had completely won their approbation, and before long their reports were filled with his praises. In the Missionary Register they depicted him as a simple, good man, gifted with a superior character and happy to welcome missionaries to his district, and a man who would without fail be civilised by a trip to London. This idea germinated in the minds of the directors of the missions, and they offered to take him to Europe. 34 This appealed greatly to Shongi, for he had been nursing

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this project for a long time. This trip had been his secret aim and had inspired his adroitly politic behaviour. This indeed was what caused this chief to undertake a long voyage to visit an unknown country. Neither the idea of civilisation nor curiosity came into this desire at all; he was in the sway of quite another preoccupation.

Shongi, warlike and fierce, thirsted to extend the field of his domination, and gave himself with all the energy of his savage passions to this instinct for the perpetual warfare waged among the different tribes. Shongi had thus carried the war to the western coasts of New Zealand, where the great Moudi-Panga, hero of these antarctic lands, was commander. Shongi was beaten, completely put to flight, and lost a great number of men, including his two brothers, who were eaten by the victor in the traditional way. This event took place about 1819. 35 Shongi swallowed his shame and was for some time reduced to powerlessness, nursing the bitter pain of his defeat, and the desire for revenge. Having traded fresh food for powder and muskets with whalers stopping over in the bay, and having got his allies to march with him, he judged it to be the right moment and pounced on Moudi-Panga's territory once more. Firearms brought him victory in a first encounter and raised his hopes; Moudi-Panga had lost his glorious prestige and the great chief was beaten in his turn. All the same the wily Moudi-Panga, when his strategy was foiled by firearms which were unknown to his tribe, noticed that after a shot had been fired it took a little time to reload the guns, and besides, Shongi's men were not yet very good at using them. He took advantage of this observation by ordering his warriors to throw themselves swiftly on their stomachs when they saw their adversaries take aim, then once the shots had been fired to leap up smartly and launch themselves like lions on their enemies and engage them in hand-to-hand combat. It all happened as Moudi-Panga had predicted. Shongi's troops fired and the Kiperro warriors fell on them and carried out a frightful massacre. Shongi and the other chiefs lost their finest rangatiras and Shongi left the battlefield grievously wounded at the hand of Moudi-Panga himself. 36

Shongi, reduced to powerlessness once more, and very happy to hold at bay his rival, who could not hope to attack his fortified i-pahs, then decided to change his plans, and to induce the despised missionaries to facilitate a trip to England for him. In that country, of which everyone had given him such a lofty idea, he hoped to procure enough firearms to arm his male population. So Shongi and Whykati set off,

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and according to the newspapers of the time their arrival in London caused a sensation, for they were presented to the King and overwhelmed with gifts. Shongi's martial figure and deep tattooing gave rise to general curiosity, but this islander, unfit to receive the slightest seeds of civilisation, remained indifferent to the marvels of the capital. Far from showing gratitude for the expense the Missionary Society had gone to for his benefit, he nursed feelings of bitterness from then on, for his pride was deeply wounded by the Society's refusal to supply him with powder and muskets. He was in ecstasy when he visited Woolwich Arsenal; it was the only public building to wrest signs of admiration from him. For him the invention of the gun was the supreme discovery; he could see nothing beyond that. He had to return to his homeland without achieving his purpose, but nevertheless carrying valuable presents with him, and on the 11th of June 1820 he arrived at Port Jackson where he had to wait for a chance to return to the Bay of Islands. In Sydney he was lucky enough to meet a trader who took over all the presents he had brought from England in exchange for ammunition and guns, and he did not hesitate to exchange even a complete suit of knight's armour which he had been given by the King of England. 37 This armour had tempted him, being likely to save the life of the warrior enveloped in its polished steel, but its weight had discouraged him.

All his desires satisfied, Shongi arrived in New Zealand, and began by calling his warriors and allies to arms. He cast aside the saintly mask behind which he had been lurking, and began the butchery of his neighbours. His reputation was enhanced by the defeat of Moudi-Panga, who was rather lucky to escape the death which had been intended for him. 38 At this time the Kiddi-Kiddi missionaries were often insulted by Shongi's hordes drunk with victory, and their lives were in great danger. 39 The warriors, imbued with carnage, came to eat the corpses of their enemies under the windows of the missionaries' barricaded house. A few chiefs protected them and the natives were no doubt afraid of the vengeance of the English warships; otherwise the missionaries and their families would have been massacred. It was about this time that several ministers left for New South Wales

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and the heads of the mission considered whether they should return to Europe. In the end the vapours of triumph dissipated, the New Zealanders reverted to less ferocious behaviour, and the missionaries were less tormented. When Shongi returned from Europe he delighted in telling his men that the missionaries in their own country were poor obscure devils, not at all highly thought of, but he discoursed incessantly on the number of soldiers, muskets and cannon possessed by the King of England. Windsor's splendour and magnificence, the public buildings and theatres, had not fired his imagination enough for him to think about them again. When he persuaded the missionaries to establish themselves in his district, Shongi had hopes that navigators would flock there and that he would get rich through them, but he pays the missionaries no respect, and his protection does not always shield them from the evil actions of his men. When at Kiddi-Kiddi he heard of the arrival of Mr Clerk, the passenger on board our corvette, he said bitterly, 'I get nothing but missionaries, and if he wants to give me pleasure he can go back where he came from; it's an armourer I need to maintain my weapons, and the Society promised me one, but I'm still waiting for him.' Since he came back to the Bay of Islands the chief has imposed taxes on a host of products, and in justification of this action he said, 'In London they made me pay for the least thing, and it's only natural that I should retaliate in the country where I'm obeyed.' But he should have taken into account the sums that the Missionary Society made available to defray his expenses. There we have the fruits of Shongi's trip.

He was never able to learn English, and could not even memorise the famous 'Goddam', the first word of the language according to Beaumarchais. However, he is partial to European cooking, and often unceremoniously invites himself to dine with the missionaries, who treat him with profound deference. He appears to have forgotten a youthful peccadillo, the massacre of some shipwrecked sailors, who made for shore in a dinghy; he and his principal rangatiras 40 ate seven men. 41 A bloodthirsty cannibal, like all the New Zealanders, he happened to kill an enemy chief in a battle which he won on the banks of the Shoukianga, and he gouged out his left eye and swallowed it in revenge, also with the idea of increasing his own glory. Indeed it is accepted by the New Zealanders that after the death of a chief his left eye is transformed into a star which shines in the firmament, and that

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the more of these stars a chief possesses in the celestial vault, the greater must be his supernatural glory. 42 Shongi, not being nobly born, 43 owes his great reputation to his ferocity and valour, but his pride, attuning itself to his success, has blinded him to the point that he believes himself to be of divine origin. His fellows look on him as a god, and greet him with the sacramental formula: hairemi, hairemi atua, hail to thee, god. 44 Mr Marsden even relates that one evening on the banks of the River Gambier, an islander, pointing out the rays of the sun which pierced the clouds to gild the summit of a mountain, remarked, 'That is Whydoua, that is the paternal spirit of Shongi.' 45 Truly this is the madness of Tiberius and Caligula.

If the mission is to prosper, which is doubtful, it can certainly not flourish until the death of this chief whose history I have just retraced; but the missionaries themselves dread this passing which will deliver them defenceless to the vengeful passions of the minor chiefs. Shongi was born at the time when Captain Marion and the Frenchmen of his crew were massacred in this same Bay of Islands, a tragic event which occurred in 1772, and which the Ipiripi Bay islanders blame on the ferocious Wangaroa tribes. 46

Dreaded by all his neighbours at the northern extremity of Ika-Na-Mauwi island, 47 supreme chief of the surroundings of the vast Ipiripi Bay, Shongi has combined with Toui and Pomare, whom he holds in subjection, 48 and all three indulge themselves in frequent sorties against the tribes scattered among the creeks of the River Thames, on the eastern coast of the island, tribes which have become the flocks from which they replenish their stocks of slaves and where they find ample supplies of human flesh. On this subject, Toui took much pleasure in recounting the details of one of the most remarkable incidents of a

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New Zealand woman aged 20 to 22 years

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recent expedition, 49 at the time of our arrival. One night, hoping to surprise one of the most strongly fortified i-pahs of the Thames, Shongi's warriors reached the very foot of the fortress in their canoes, but the natives of the i-pah were on the defensive and, having been warned by one of their partisans of the attack, had set at the entrance to the bay solidly planted stakes which reached to the surface of the water. The canoes were stopped by this obstacle, and for two days they were harassed by stones launched from the platforms of the i-pah, while Toui and Pomare advanced on land with their armed contingent. It is worth remarking that the inhabitants of the Thames area have no firearms at all, while the tribes of the north have an abundant supply of them. Shongi, roaring, was at first compelled to beat a retreat; then returning to the attack, while his allies fired on the defenders of the i-pah, he tore down the palisades, not without heavy losses. This first exploit accomplished, it was necessary to scale the flanks of the steep mountain which was crowned by the i-pah, and the tribes lost a great number of men in this assault, but at last they gained the summit. There they found the besieged tribes protected by a thick earth wall, and their musket-balls buried themselves in this improvised parapet. At this stage Shongi and his men decided to erect a log platform to overlook the stronghold, and the most able marksmen were installed on it. With each shot one of the defenders died at his post; they were all killed, and nothing more stood in the way of the triumph of the northern warriors. The i-pah was invaded; women, children and old people were massacred, and three European seamen who had settled down with this tribe met the same fate. The wounded warriors were finished off, and from the mound of corpses -- for the Thames tribe lost three hundred men -- Shongi took the best morsels to present to the families of the New Zealanders who had taken part in the expedition. They remained on the scene of carnage, gorging themselves on the flesh of their enemies until they were driven away by the putrefaction of the corpses -- a shocking banquet, but one which is quite normal for this frightful race of cannibals. Indeed, out of humanity one should supply firearms to the southern tribes, so as to make the northern tribes more cautious and thus even up the chances, in order to put an end to this general extermination of the population of villages which lack this means of defence. It was the daughters and wives of the Thames tribesmen whom Toui and his men had sent on board the corvette to prostitute themselves, unhappy victims of the ferocity of a savage conqueror, whose men were later to suffer merciless and in truth well-merited reprisals. 50

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Shongi slept on board our vessel, and during his short stay he never stopped asking for powder, offering in exchange fine mats and sweet potatoes, with which he had filled a canoe. Having been greeted by a five-gun salute, he repaid this courtesy when he left the ship to go to Kiddi-Kiddi by firing off his double-barrelled gun. There was nothing in his appearance to distinguish Shongi from his subjects, if not the perfection of his hieroglyphic tattooing. But I noticed on his chest an unusual number of the pieces of ivory they use to kill lice, 51 and many little ornamental jade objects.

On the morning of the 6th M. de Blosseville and I went ashore, intending to survey the surroundings of our anchorage. First of all we visited Orokaoua i-pah, 52 perched on the ridge of a narrow peninsula a hundred and fifty feet above sea-level, and protected by the steep slopes of the flanks of the hill. The ascent was most rugged and access to the village extremely difficult, but the natives still protect the approaches with deep cuttings, or with stakes lining the shore. In a war of invasion they retire into Toui's big i-pah. However, the natives, being used to going barefoot, clamber up the slopes much more easily than we do; their toes grip the earth, while ours are concealed and rendered inert by our footwear. Our officers established the observatory right on the beach of this peninsula, 53 near a few miserable huts. The inhabitants surrounded us begging for fish-hooks, and all of them gave off a stink of rotten fish, for they were engaged in gutting their catch, which they hang on the branches of trees to dry. As the winters are very stormy, the natives are reduced to inactivity for a large part of the year, and Orokaoua is a big fishery where fish are smoked and dried for winter provisions. The men, we were told, were away on an expedition, and Toui, eager to exaggerate the number of his subjects, told us that he commanded two hundred warriors. It was a boast, a fable, without a shadow of a doubt, for I counted scarcely thirty huts, built level with the ground, from which women and children appeared, dragging themselves on their knees. I think that by reckoning three people per cabin one would arrive at a fair estimate of the actual population of this headland. As we went round the i-pah we observed the meals of several families who were feasting on fish, shellfish, sweet potatoes and cakes made of pounded fern roots. Cultivated plots on these heights were planted in cabbages and turnips, and also in flax or phormium, 54 although this plant prefers cool, damp places. In a swamp

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at the sandy tip of the bay we saw the most beautiful stands of it, bearing leaves four inches wide and seven feet long. I collected a certain quantity of the seeds of this useful plant in order to sow them in France, so that it may more easily adapt itself to the round of our seasons. 55 A little way from the i-pah we came across a carved chest, painted red and supported four feet above the ground by four posts. As it was empty we asked a native what it was for, and he tried to make us go away from it, making signs to indicate that it covered a grave. Since then we have seen other mausoleums of this type, always in lonely spots; but there are not many of them, and indeed it is not usual for the New Zealanders to die of old age in the bosom of their families, what with their warlike habits and their cannibalism! For them the most common grave consists of the stomach of a compatriot, and their bones are used to make flutes and fish-hooks.

Following a narrow path which wound coyly towards the mountains to the east of our anchorage, we went down again to reach a sandy beach on which were erected some huts arranged in a semi-circle at the edge of a creek, but they seemed long since abandoned. All this part of the coast is made up of jagged but high peninsulas, which form a lacy festoon for this isle-jewelled bay. The rocks of this point took on the most bizarre shapes, rising up in pyramids, opening in porticoes and triumphal arches, or simulating dilapidated ruins. When we reached the top of a fairly high hill, we commanded a panorama of the vast Ipiripi Bay, and M. de Blosseville took bearings with a sextant on a host of clearly delineated points. Never have travellers been presented with a more impressive view. Pocock Point and the Sentinel as far as Cape Brett to the east marked the limit of our horizon, and our eyes travelled over the islands of Otteou, Motou roou or Marion, Takera-Kera, Arohea, etc. 56 The beach where the unhappy Marion was felled by the blows of a native's mere (jade club) spread out at our feet to remind us of that bloody episode of a drama in which our compatriots were ruthlessly slaughtered. There was the i-pah which Crozet battered down with artillery and burnt to avenge his compatriots. It will

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be remembered that Marion left the Ile-de-France in 1772, with the two vessels of the India Company, Le Castries and the Mascarin, on a voyage of discovery. His masts were lost in a tempest and he had to seek refuge in the Bay of Islands. For a month he had been living on good terms with the islanders when on going ashore as usual he and his men were massacred; the two ships lost thirty men. Crozet, Marion's second in command, in an attack killed a large number of chiefs, ravaged their territory, and forced the survivors to take to the bush, disastrous reprisals which were to be the cause of other massacres later on. Crozet, now rid of the islanders, cut new masts and stayed another sixty-four days at the anchorage without undertaking anything new. 57 The New Zealanders have retained a deep memory of this chastisement; Toui's father had told him the most minute, circumstantial details of that bloody drama, of which he gave us a convincing account as he showed us its setting. The seamen, engaged in gathering wood, had been sitting in a circle eating their evening meal, when an important chief entered the circle and without permission put his hand to the platter and took a portion of the food. A sailor jumped up and struck him; the furious chief was raising his patou-patou to avenge himself when a sentry took aim and laid him stone-dead. Just as this affray began, Marion was going down to the shore after his supper. The natives rallied and determined to avenge the killing of their chief. They began their reprisals by striking down the French captain, of whom they were in awe, and sweeping up innocent and guilty in their massacre, they slaughtered all the sailors within their reach. This version has the ring of truth. 58 Ships' seamen and soldiers have almost always been the cause of conflict between Europeans and the natives. These civilised men, much less moderate than the so-called savages, are without judgment and without tact. They take liberties with the natives themselves, with their wives or daughters, with their possessions, which they seize with criminal recklessness, and are ready to use brute force at the slightest sign. On the slightest pretext a European seaman shoots at a savage with as much pleasure as at a hare, and then we are astonished by the misfortunes which occur! We forget that the savages have such a memory that a grievance is passed on from one generation to the next until it is avenged, and that these tribes do not recognise our national distinctions

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and punish navigators of one nation for a fault committed often many years before by a ship from a completely different country. La Pérouse, in his famous outburst against savages and the philosophers who extol them, committed the greatest error of judgment. We can understand and we must respect his deep suffering, embittered as he was by the loss of his unfortunate companions, so vilely massacred. 59 But La Pérouse forgot that man the world over is a wicked and vicious creature whose spiteful nature is masked by civilisation, while primitive life exalts and honours the vengeful feelings which prevent a race from ever forgetting an offence. He himself, the leader of a humane expedition, paid for the misdeeds of sea-rovers who shame our civilisation by the villainy of their deeds which almost always go unknown and unpunished. For an example one need go no further than Easter Island, inhabited by an hospitable race whom the whalers deceived, taking men away by force, infecting the island with syphilis, and amusing themselves by firing on the population! And now we expect a European ship to be welcomed there! 60 Today no wise captain can have dealings with islanders of any island whatsoever unless he takes the most minute precautions in the interest of his crew, not forgetting a single one; the safety of those depending on him is at stake.

From the hill on which M. de Blosseville and I were standing, the Bay of Islands spread out before our eyes, with its many bays and inlets which cut up the land and bite deeply into it. Its shores are irregular, rugged, and rise gradually to merge with the hills and ranges of the interior. The coarse, black, slate cliffs which dam the waves rise in ramparts, or hollow into deep caves, are cracked and split, or pierced with innumerable holes which make them look like sieves. They are sometimes covered by a layer of clay slate which festoons them with a bright red piping. Open to the north, this vast bay is about nine or ten miles wide and about as deep, measuring from the Wytangi River. 61 But there are inlets which give more than fifteen or twenty miles of navigable water. The solitary rock called the Sentinel is called Wivia

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by the inhabitants. 62 Pokoura village is built on the NE arm, 63 the Kiddi-Kiddi River loses itself in the S E one, 64 and dwellings are to be found also in the southern and eastern inlets. M. Bérard and M. de Blois, two able officers, were engaged in surveying this part of the bay, and M. de Blosseville completed their work with bearings on various creeks, taken with the care which characterises all his work.

There seemed to me to be little variety in the vegetation of the Bay region. I was there in the autumn of these parts at a time when the flowering season was partly over; my herbarium was enriched by only five or six plants with their flowers. There are scarcely any trees except in the gullies, but as the soil is composed of a deep layer of humus the trees there attain the most majestic proportions. The hill-tops are bare of shrubs, and from a distance they seem to be covered with bright green turf, owing to a thick growth of fern two or three feet high. As one goes inland vegetation increases, the bush is thicker, trees of very hard red and black wood rise on the slopes, and the soil is kept damp by a carpet of the pretty, kidney-shaped trichomane. The ground is so fertile that vegetables take root and grow vigorously everywhere--cabbages, turnips, radishes, even lettuces, the seeds of which were sown by Marion and his companions. 65 Every morning our sailors went to get provisions from any place at all, and this abundance is especially advantageous for men who are debilitated by salted shipboard food. There are fresh-water brooklets in some of the gullies, and we drew our water at the watering-place at the end of the eastern branch of Ipiripi. 66

Satisfied with our excursion, M. de Blosseville and I returned along the beach to the corvette. Some New Zealanders who were fishing gave me some curious fish including a graceful new hippocampus or sea-horse. A large canoe-load of islanders from a nearby village came to seek refuge on the beach, and at their approach the inhabitants of Orokaoua leapt to arms and advanced on them, prancing, singing, and making a thousand grimaces. The newcomers responded to this ceremonial by yelling and brandishing their weapons, then all this uproar terminated in friendly recognition and fulfilment of the laws of hospitality. At first we had not been sure what to think of this spirited alert. With typical courtesy the islanders hastened to fit out a big canoe to take us back to La Coquille, and in our honour they rowed in time to a war-chant.

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On the 6th it rained a great deal. I did not leave the ship, for M. de Blois and M. Bérard had generously given me a great number of birds which they had killed, and I had to prepare them for my collections. When I could not go hunting myself, my principal assistant was our master gunner Rolland, for whose willingness and zeal I cannot express enough gratitude. I had trained the ship's medical orderly, a man from the same district as myself named Grimard, of Rochefort, to help me. He had learned to pluck birds well, and was extremely useful to me in this way. This seaman was the quaintest oddity one could meet. He kept a journal of our voyage, most remarkable for its grotesque expressions and for the lies which seasoned every line. I read some pages of it in which the vis comica, mixed with farce, made me roar with laughter.

On the 8th the commander put the large boat under the orders of M. Gabert, the corvette's purser, in order that he should go to Kiddi-Kiddi to buy some pigs for the crew's provisions. M. de Blosseville and Master Rolland embarked, and the sailors who manned it were well armed. The articles which they took for trading consisted of muskets, gunpowder, and lengths of red fabric. Their expedition lasted three days, and on his return M. Gabert reported the result of it to me approximately as follows: After leaving the ship the boat entered Korroradika Bay, the seat of the missionary Williams. 67 While M. Gabert was about the object of his mission Master Rolland attempted to go into the woods, intending to bring back some curious birds for me. A steadily increasing number of natives followed him, and Mr Williams became aware of this just in time to beg M. Gabert to make him retrace his steps, warning him that he would be robbed of everything he had, the New Zealanders of that part of the bay being such thieves and so lacking in respect for Europeans. From this harbour the boat sailed for Ranghidou, and then for Kiddi-Kiddi, which takes its name from the falls or cascades which feed the waters of the river. 68 There our sailors were welcomed by the missionaries whom they found barricaded in their houses as if in a fortress, but on the other hand Shongi's people demonstrated a thought-provoking restlessness and audacity. They rummaged roughly through the bags of M. Gabert, M. de Blosseville, and Rolland, and when they knew that there was powder in the boat they held a council to decide how they could steal it. They did not proceed to any kind of action, however, doubtless

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through fear of the corvette's artillery, which would have made them pay for their theft by burning their i-pah. These gentlemen slept in the mission house, which, like the convents of Sinai, cannot be entered until a brother has inspected the visitors through a slanting grille. The outer gate leads through a maze of stout palisades to the house, which is itself tightly sealed. Shongi honoured with his presence a tea-party presided over by Mrs Clerk, and that lady's husband announced him in these words: 'This gentleman is master Shongi!'

I was most anxious to make a close inspection of the metropolis of Toui's power, his famous Kaouera i-pah, and I devoted the day of the 10th to this purpose. Nature has done everything to make this village almost impregnable; it is the best protected in New Zealand. A handful of Europeans with supplies would hold an army at bay there; but the i-pah, lacking fresh water, could not survive a blockade. True, the warriors of this country do not usually remain in front of the place they wish to take; they attack and seize it, or are repulsed and withdraw.

Situated in an amphitheatre on the flank of an isolated bluff which projects into the sea to form the peninsula called Paroa, the flanks of this i-pah are cut into precipitous walls, washed by the waves. The canoes are drawn up on the beach, and a narrow zigzagging path snakes up the sloping face of this steep mound. Even the natives, who are used to the climb and are agile and nimble in their movements, do not mount this steep track without difficulty, and we put up a poor front, sweating and puffing to stay on our four extremities, for it had rained and we kept slipping back instead of climbing. I was certainly not filled with admiration for the art which the New Zealanders apply to their means of communication, more suited to wild goats than to bipeds. However, a more accessible route opens to the east on the edges of the spurs; the means of defence are therefore increased on this side. As a last resort it occurred to me to take this track, and I sincerely regretted not having done so sooner. At last, soaked in sweat, I reached the top of the bluff. At the solidly barricaded entrance gate, the approaches to which were protected by wide cuttings, I found Toui and the ariki 69 in New Zealand costume. They were waiting to conduct me in with military honours, and the warriors performed their war-dance, uttering great cries. Once this ceremony was over I was permitted to pass the barricades, dragging myself on all fours under a little gateway which as an entrance would have served dogs better than men. Toui, proud to have his means of defence admired, contentedly showed me the deep ditches he had had made, from which the garrison, covered and protected in the depths, could shoot down the attackers. There were several

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rows of stout piles, called kaeo tahepa, 70 placed so that they touched one another, and the warriors who shelter behind them push pointed javelins more than twenty feet long through the holes, and stab anyone who tries to scale the flanks of the mountain. Truly one cannot but be astonished by the destructive instinct which drives this race to concern itself with nothing but methods of attack and defence for wars which constitute the only pleasure of their entire lives.

The interior of the i-pah bore witness to great poverty, and Toui tried to extenuate the disagreeable impression made by these miserable huts set at ground level by extolling, in his usual bragging way, the five hundred warriors who recognised his authority. I saw very few men, but Toui added that his people had left for Koradika to join Pomare, who was going to wage war against Iapou at Ox's Bay, 71 and said that as soon as we had left he was going himself, to rally his troops and his ally. Toui greatly relieved me by announcing that he had to leave. I wandered at whim through his village, followed by the children and a few young slaves. At the doors of the huts women were pounding phormium fibre to make it ready for weaving those beautiful, fine mats which are so supple and strong. The huts looked like Lilliputian dwellings, they were so low; at the most scarcely three or four feet high and about as wide, they were about six or seven feet long. They are rectangular in shape, having side walls supported by supple peeled branches, and a roof made of a layer of close-packed rushes. At the front there is a kind of alcove where they come to sniff the air when it rains. The partition which separates this part from the other, in which two people sleep on the straw which serves as a bed, can be passed only by crawling, and is closed by a little door. It is easy to keep these burrow-like dwellings warm, and the rigours of the winter are not felt. As the natives have the custom of perching their dwellings like eyries on the topmost points of hills, they no doubt make them so small to conserve space and to defy the terrible gales which occur frequently in these latitudes. A few natives were sleeping wrapped in their mats, their heads hidden in their arms, and their legs folded up to their stomachs; the huts will hold three individuals only if they sleep in this bizarre position. I admired the cleanness of three of these dwellings, for all the others stank horribly. The service buildings are some distance from each family's hut. A straw roof supported by four sticks protects the open ovens from the rain; these ovens, near the kitchens or kaouta, 72 are

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large, wide-mouthed holes, lined with stones which they heat in the Oceanian manner. I have eaten sweet potatoes cooked in this way, and they tasted delicious. The male and female slaves sleep in the open, or sometimes shelter under these lean-tos. I saw some of them pounding in a mortar fern roots, from which they knead a kind of bread, of which great supplies are needed for periods of scarcity, and bundles of the vegetable were heaped up all around. Girls were beating phormium leaves with mallets to extract the fibres. Drying-racks were covered with gutted fish drying in the sun. The water supply was kept in big gourds which grow only in the north of the island, and to find this water they have to go quite a long way from the i-pah to the spring in the valley. I noticed in each receptacle a piece of an aromatic plant which imparts its flavour to the water and helps to keep it sweet. As I went past Toui's mansion, which has nothing to distinguish it from the other abodes, I saw this chief engaged in washing the few clothes he possesses, which had become dirty during the visits he had made to us. I understand how Ulysses might have found Nausicaa charming in the performance of this duty of the girls of ancient Greece, but Toui appeared to me nothing less than a hero, although he did his washing at home. Toui was as badly housed as the least of his subordinates; however, he showed me an English jack which he sometimes flew over his i-pah, and which had been given to him for this purpose. Carefully wrapped in this flag was a well-tattooed head which had belonged to a chief he had killed; his dog had eaten half of its face. I offered to buy it, but he refused, assuring me that he could not part with it as he was shortly to make peace with the tribe the dead man had commanded, and the first token of friendship to be claimed would be this head, destined to be returned to the son of the victim. Korokoro's son was less difficult; he presented me with a fork made from the forearm of a chief his father had eaten. This singular and frightful object was made from the bone, cut to sharp points at the cubital extremity, while the carpal extremity was embellished with mother-of-pearl and carvings. It turned my stomach to be among these cannibals who were one day to satisfy the hunger of their disgusting neighbours. 73 I went down by the hill track, and had myself taken back to the ship in a canoe.

On the 11th a gale which lasted four days began with unimaginable

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violence. Rain came clown in torrents in the intervals between squalls. It was impossible to leave the ship even for a moment, and the New Zealanders remained carefully hidden in their huts. It is at these times that they need their reserve supplies, and as these storms occur frequently, especially in the winter, they must hasten to profit from the fine weather to provide themselves with foodstuffs and to venture on their long-distance expeditions. In this storm an old woman's canoe, the only one which had stayed tied to the side of the corvette, broke its mooring-line, and the sea, which was rather rough, began to carry it away. When they heard the woman's cries and groans, some of the unfortunate young female slaves who lived on board threw themselves into the ice-cold water with their mats wrapped round them, and brought back the unlucky canoe. The first to dive in, with rare courage, was a crazy, cheerful girl whom the seamen called Nanette, whose irrepressible gaiety was the delight of the hammocks. This event gave us a favourable opinion of the good nature of these poor girls, whose corrupt morals made us blush in spite of the fact that we were used to seeing them dispense their favours to all comers. Their arms and breasts were tattooed like those of seamen with the names of their lovers, the name of the ship, and the date of its visit to the Bay of Islands. By inspecting their bodies one could trace the itinerary of ships putting into port, of which these living medallions kept a record as long as they lived. On the 16th we drove this swarm of girls off the ship, and they left without regret, taking with them the rewards of their co-operation, and consoling themselves for our departure with the hope that some other vessel would soon arrive.

During our stay at the Bay of Islands I had Séguin wine issued to the rain-soaked sailors of the watch as a prophylactic against fever and as a gentle stimulant of the digestive system when the skin was chilled by the humidity of the atmosphere. I was entirely pleased by the effectiveness of this precaution.

The missionaries, of whom I have spoken many times, have chosen New Zealand as a country which it would be useful to bring over to the Christian faith; and I must say that as far as I am concerned a religion which enlightened these tribes would be in my opinion the greatest benefit this frightful race could receive. But as the warlike New Zealanders are hardened in their beliefs, and rebel against any importation of civilisation, the work of the missions has completely miscarried, and instead of being in absolute command, as they are with the gentle and inoffensive Tahitians, the missionaries bow their heads and are humble and submissive before these ferocious pagans. Would it be a fresh example of that cruel axiom, that in this life one must choose between the roles of wolf and lamb, and be either victim or oppressor?

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After visiting the ports of New Zealand Cook realised how advantageous the occupation of its islands would be, and everything leads us to believe that it is here that he had planned to lay the foundations of the convict colony, when New South Wales was finally chosen for that establishment, by that navigator and Banks. New Zealand was thought of as an indispensable annexe, placed at the convenience of the new settlement. 74 At that time nothing was known of the intractability of the inhabitants, and of all that their bloodthirsty customs would put in the way of peaceful occupation. Early on, the founders of Sydney realised that force of arms could achieve nothing against the New Zealand tribes, and Mr Marsden, Bishop of New South Wales, began his unremitting efforts to introduce the omnipotence of the British Empire with the Protestant cult. 75 Chiefs brought to Port Jackson were overwhelmed with presents and taken to England, to give them an elevated idea of the power of this kingdom; many catechumens were instructed at Paramatta, in Mr Marsden's own house, and in spite of his age this minister himself made several trips to New Zealand. Little by little the missionaries trickled into the Bay of Islands and established themselves there, to the great satisfaction of the natives, who counted on their attracting a greater number of European vessels into this port, and as one thing leads to another they hoped, with good reason, to obtain abundant supplies of guns and ammunition from the navigators in exchange for foodstuffs. Thanks to the success of this reckoning, the tribes of the north were able to exterminate those of the other parts of the island. If Protestantism had been able to change the savage customs of these ferocious tribes, destroy the horrible practice of cannibalism, and bring about the triumph of the doctrines of Christ, it would have achieved a glory warmly applauded by Europe. But whether the fault lay with the evangelical workers or with the hardness of the soil where the word of God was meant to take root, it must be said that these missions, if they were not a complete failure, produced no harvest. The New Zealanders, immovably fixed in their tendencies and beliefs, would blush to occupy themselves with growing crops or breeding animals. Their anti-social, plundering traditions are opposed to any kind of improvement. To change them one would have to take possession of their territory, build fortresses, and forcibly impose a code of civilisation.

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The New Zealand missionaries have recruited a great number of artisans, and Mr Clerk, who was on board our ship, had been a locksmith before embracing the career of apostleship. I noticed that these new ministers are the ones who are most arrogant and dominating. Their tone is harsh and cutting and their manners are marked by the bluntness which accompanies a lack of elementary breeding. Their pride, so lofty with the Tahitians, finds its match in New Zealand, and is humiliated under the iron will of the masters of the land. Here then they concern themselves only with agriculture, the products of which they sell to ships which put into port, with raising livestock or with trading in building-wood, provisions, etc. Further, it is through their enterprise that all the tattooed heads are smuggled into Sydney; and moreover they are sold there at a high price reaching 10 or 20 dollars. When Mr Clerk left our vessel, he said in a mystic tone and with a benign air: 'If only you could be here in ten years, you would find, I hope, by the grace of God, that great changes had been made.' Indeed, those changes are easy to predict: Mr Clerk will have managed to gather up a few piastres, or he will have been eaten by his catechumens; these perhaps are the changes there will be. 76 Of all the missionaries in the Bay of Islands, Mr Kendall, the author of the New Zealand grammar, stands out by reason of his learning. At the time of our visit he was on very bad terms with his colleagues, and had even withdrawn to Pomare's territory. 77 Mr Kendall was invested with the powers of the Government of New South Wales. The document in my possession is dated 9th of November 1814, and was published in the Sydney Gazette. A short extract from it follows: 'The Governor, having been informed that the captains and seamen of ships visiting or trading with the islands of New Zealand, and more especially with the Bay of Islands, are in the habit of offering gross insults or injuries to the natives, by violently seizing on their persons and taking them on board; the Governor, being solicitous to protect the natives and maintain their rights and privileges, in like manner to all those who live in the dependent territories of New South Wales, orders as follows: No captain or seaman shall take on board any natives without the permission of the chief or chiefs of his district, which permission shall be certified by a written document issued by Mr Thomas Kendall, magistrate resident in the Bay of Islands. It is also forbidden to disembark Europeans on any part of the ports, harbours, etc., without the permission of the chiefs and the certificate of the same resident magistrate. Any disobedience of

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the present order will be punished in accordance with the laws, etc. Signed John Thomas Campbell. 78

I thought I noticed a kind of political veneer on the English missions and the Anglo-American ones (American Board of Missions). They seem to have tried to convert the inhabitants of only the large islands on the routes of their vessels -- New Zealand for the Port Jackson region, the Society and Sandwich archipelagoes - as safe ports of call for long crossings. But if civilisation had been the goal, it would have been far more important to cultivate the friendship of the inhabitants of the Fijis, the Hebrides, Santa Cruz, the Navigators, New Guinea, etc. 79

The principal seat of the missions in New Zealand bears the name of Gloucester. It was established in 1819 on the banks of the Kiddi-Kiddi, not far from Shongi's i-pah. 80 Three ministers 81 live there with their wives and children, as do the carpenters who cut building-wood for export by the mission. These Europeans, being proprietors by cession of quite extensive territory, grow wheat for their own consumption and sell the surplus, and their livestock provides them with butter and cheese to sweeten their material existence. The Society in London pays them a fixed stipend and in addition a supplement for their wives and for each child. Another establishment, founded in 1815, is at Ranghidou at the northern point of the same bay; Mr Hall and Mr King were the missionaries. 82 Mr Williams lives at Paiea, at the southern end of the bay. 83 And Mr Kendall, whom I have just mentioned, has parted from his colleagues after disagreements with them and has withdrawn to Malouhi in Pomare's harbour, an excellent and much-frequented anchorage. The missionaries have accused him of supplying firearms to the natives, thus encouraging their murderous tendencies, and further of living in concubinage with native girls after separating from his lawful wife. They also attribute to Mr Kendall a justification which is not without some appearance of truth -- they report him as saying, 'The surest and swiftest method of civilisation is to mix with the people concerned.' Mr Kendall is scholarly and possessed of real literary merit, and it is through him that Europe can one day have a clear and precise idea of the New Zealanders' traditions. 84

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It must not be thought that this religious outfit is the only one to invade New Zealand. A London society, which is distinguished from the Church Missionary Society by the title of Wesley or Wesleyans has also attempted to proselytise by establishing, in 1821, a mission at Wangaroa, to the north of the Cavalles Islands, not far from the Bay of Islands. In the end a committee was formed on the 2nd of March 1822, under the patronage of Sir Thomas Brisbane, to give better direction to these various religious enterprises. 85 Mr Marsden, after three successive trips to inspect the evangelical labours, the results of which are recorded in the 1822 Missionary Register, ended all his reports, not like Cato delenda Carthago, 86 but with this sentence: 'The New Zealanders are good people who seek to be enlightened, and who ask for the protection of England.' Then he ended with this peroration which I write verbatim: 'No permanent mission could have been established in New Zealand, or in any other island in the South Seas (the Spaniards took the initiative many years ago), if divine Providence, which overrules all, had not led the English nation to establish a colony in New South Wales. Through the medium of the British nation He has now sent His Gospel to the ends of the earth, and the trumpet of the Jubilee has been sounded from pole to pole.' 87

By August 1824 there were barely ten converts to Protestantism, and even their fervour still smacked of former times. I shall limit myself to the citation of one fact: a Christian who was renowned for his fervour found himself at the point of death, and constantly interrupted the minister who was speaking to him of God to beg him to get a little human flesh for him. He felt such a need of this nourishment that he hoped it would bring about his recovery. 88

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It remains only to give some idea of the physical characteristics of the natural products of New Zealand, and I shall be brief; I have published much more circumstantial details in another work; 89 such details would be tiresome in this account.

New Zealand is composed of two large islands separated by a channel called Cook Strait; many small islands are scattered in the harbours and along the coasts. It was discovered in 1642 by Abel Tasman, who dropped anchor in the harbour which he called Murderers' Bay. The two islands were successively explored by Marion, Cook, Surville, Vancouver, and later by a multitude of English navigators sent from New South Wales. 90 Cook, on information given him by the New Zealanders, adopted the name Eaheino-mauwe for the northern island, and Tawai-poenamou for the southern. The first name is distorted and should be written E-ika-na-mauwi. It means Mauwi's fish, for the natives liken the shape of the island to a whale lying on the surface of the water; Mauwi was the first man created. Tawai-pouna-mou means the whale (tawai) which makes the green jade. 91 Beds of magnificent axinite jade are indeed found in the southern island. From this smooth, green stone they fashion precious axes, the idols which they wear round their necks, and various amulets. Since the coming of the Europeans the New Zealanders have adopted the word Niou-tireni, which is a rendering of the English New Zealand.

Few islands are as broken up and jagged as these. Their coasts are just a series of narrow ribbons, cut by deep bays or innumerable little islands, and by rivers which, as they penetrate inland, branch out ad infinitum, and meet and mingle with one another. They could serve as a basis for a system of communications between all points. High mountains which do not form ranges stand out here and there, and seem to be of igneous origin, being formed of basalts and lavas. The

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Five New Zealand artefacts (that nearest the left and the four nearest the right): 'Flute. New Zealand'; 'New Zealand fish-hook, [the barb] made of fishbone'; 'Tooth of marine fish which the New Zealanders wear hanging from their ears and to which they attach the most superstitious notions; the women use this to lacerate their faces in their mourning ceremonies'; 'Toki or axe of New Zealand, [the head] green talc'; 'Patou-Patou, New Zealand, weapon, green talc'.

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northern part of the north island is much better known than the rest of the two islands, and this outline is principally concerned with the products of this region. The rocks around Marion Bay (Ipiripi Island) are black, burnt, gloomy in appearance, and split in every direction; they belong to the flaky basalt group changing to phonolite. 92 Some of the coastal rocks are eaten away and porous like sponges; at some points the pebbles cast up by the waves are stuck together like puddings. 93 The rocks are covered by a layer of yellowish or reddish clay, crossed by countless wide veins of red tufa (peperite). A second layer of pure soil covers the first, and the epidermis is formed by a covering of black mould, light and very fertile. Several recently extinct volcanoes have been reported in the interior, and there are many pumices and obsidians (called mata by the natives); the most common axes are made from the latter. 94 Lake Roto-doua 95 and its hot springs are obviously an extinct crater. In the Kiddi-Kiddi area waterfalls more than eighty feet high drop from basalt flows to feed the river of the same name.

It seems that the beautiful axinite jade from which the patous-patous are made is to be found in only one spot in the southern island, near Cook Strait. 96 The inhabitants make fetishes and arms which they sell or which are taken from them, and these objects are carried to all other parts of the northern island. I saw women who made beauty spots on their faces with the sky-blue dust of a mineral called para-éka-ouai-aoua. 97

The season of our visit was not a good one for collecting botanical specimens. The flowering season was over, and although there was vegetation, it was verdant only in ravines and damp places; on the mountain sides it took on a reddish appearance from the closely packed mass of acrostichum furcatum, a fern with edible roots. 98 The forms of vegetation are few and monotonous; they are very different from the splendour and profusion of tropical plants. In their uniformity and dreariness they are nothing like the plants of New South Wales, resembling rather the vegetation of Chile. Some hills are covered with trees of medium height, with dull grey foliage like an olive tree. Large

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trees, bushes and pepper plants grow in the sandy bays. I found no edible fruit, apart from a kind of small, bluish plum which the plump pigeons swallow whole. 99 The korarou, 100 the phormium grow in damp places, while an oxalis and a small daisy were the only plants flowering on the turf at that time. Trees which because of their hardness and great size are most suitable for maritime construction are found in the interior of New Zealand. This timber and the linen plant (phormium) are the most commercially desirable products.

There are few indigenous or naturalised animals. The pig, which seems to have been introduced recently, has multiplied considerably; the dog and the rat are true natives. 101 The rat is much smaller than ours, and the islanders feast on its flesh as on that of dogs. This latter animal is large, having the physiognomy of a wolf-dog, and is usually black and white. Its ears are short and straight and it does not bark. The faithful companion of the natives, it also supplies them with skins for cloaks. The missionaries have introduced oxen, cows, horses and sheep. Seals, very common on the southern coasts, have provided the opportunity for the lucrative fishing expeditions carried out by the Port Jackson ship-fitters.

There are very many curious varieties of birds. 102 Discoveries will be made among them for a long time yet, but the most remarkable of them is undoubtedly the apteryx called kivikivi, a bizarre bird which combines some of the characteristics of the penguin and the emu, having a long beak, rudimentary wings and furry feathers on its body. 103

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The natives hunt them with dogs, and make cloaks of them by sewing several skins together. Cook's poe bird is a pretty blackbird with a curly cravat, called toui by the islanders, who like to keep them in cages and teach them whole ditties, such as ko tu koe, ko rongo koe, ko te manu widi, etc. 104 There are curious varieties of doves, but the spadiceous dove, a bird of delicate flesh, is particularly remarkable for its rich, golden green plumage with metallic highlights. 105 There are various pretty southern parakeets, delicate in form and rich with bright colours, and one of the strangest of them is undoubtedly the kaka or psittacus nestor of the naturalists, a tame, hopping bird, docile and easily trained. 106 I had a live specimen which had memorised a certain number of lines from the ode Pyhe. 107 Among the fly-catchers it is worth mentioning the sparrows, the larks, the kingfishers and a host of types of small sparrow which differ from the species known elsewhere. The troopial with wattles, 108 the sannio, 109 and the peculiar finch with gauze tail are charming species. 110 The flocks of river and sea birds must naturally be more numerous on the broken shores which would offer them peaceful bays or shelters. Albatrosses, gannets, gulls, cormorants, herons, etc, are plentiful everywhere; one particular quail,

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very like that of Port Jackson, makes delicate game. 111

The reptiles are limited to some small kinds of lizard, but the fish belong to the orders of the high southern latitudes. There are not many kinds of crustaceans and zoophytes, and I saw no insects at all. On the other hand the harbours and creeks are extraordinarily rich in beautiful and rare shells; we found masses of them which were previously undescribed, and future voyagers will make abundant discoveries there. We had thousands of examples of the emperor-trochus, 112 the southern haliotis, 113 limpets, calyptrates, etc. Snails which are just as remarkable live in the woods. Among others there is the rare bulimus, called by Chemnitz Midas's Ear of the southern lands. 114 During our stay at the Bay of Islands the weather was alternately calm or very cloudy and rainy, the temperature pleasant, but cold during the high wind and rain.

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CHAPTER XXII

General Observations on the Inhabitants of New Zealand. 115

The New Zealanders are among the strangest peoples one could study. Their finely tempered spirit and the mixture of gentleness and cruelty in their customs of war make their character an exceptional one. Indeed the New Zealanders seem to have none of the hospitable customs which characterise some tribes of the same race which have settled in the South Sea islands. Their nature is sullen and ferocious; it might be said that hatred and vengeance are the only passions which move them. For them every outsider who comes to their shores is an enemy. Thus the observer is saddened by their moral character when he fathoms the barbarity of their customs, their cannibalism, their destructive instincts, the blindness of their superstitions, and their scorn for the things which make life pleasant. However, in the midst of customs which are so far removed even from the birth of civilisation, one finds some virtues developed with impressive vigour and primitive grandeur. Every New Zealander is much attached to the various members of his family and to all those who belong to his tribe. All his affection is concentrated within his tribe; outside, he sees only enemies, or, rarely, allies, and if neighbouring tribes unite, this union is cemented only by the interest of the moment, and is soon broken by disagreements.

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We find then in New Zealanders the physiognomy, the customs, the religious ideas, and the language of the inhabitants of Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Sandwich Islands, but, cast on a soil much poorer in resources, the traditions of their ancestors have been preserved in a much more intact form. In general the New Zealanders are taller and more robust than the Tahitians. The practice of war and marches through the mountains toughen their limbs, which are like those of athletes. They are rarely less than five feet seven or eight inches tall; their skin is no different in colour from that of a southern European. Their features are remarkable for their expression, which is rarely frank and open, but usually fiercely independent. These people are distinguished by an oval face, a narrow forehead, and large, black, fiery eyes; the nose is sometimes aquiline but more often flattened, and the mouth is large, with thick lips. The teeth are finely enamelled, small, and very regularly tinted. The New Zealanders wear their hair long, falling over the face in straggling locks, and only the chiefs take the trouble to dress it in a single tuft on the head. Their hair is naturally coarse; it is black, or sometimes reddish, no doubt because some individuals follow the custom of sprinkling their heads with ochre dust. Toui, chief of Kaouera i-pah, who often visited us, wore his hair floating in long locks which he dressed, when he went on military expeditions, so as to give his features a more formidable appearance. Many natives wear their beards long and flowing over their chests, and recall some of the heads of antiquity portrayed by the brush of the great painters. The young men remain beardless for a long time. All their movements are agile and nimble, and although their legs are perfectly formed, they soon develop congestion of the hams, owing to their habit of squatting on their heels.

All the married women who came on board the corvette La Coquille had much more fully developed figures than the slave-girls who lived on the ship (having been sent there by their masters in the hope of obtaining European goods in exchange for their favours). These women were robust and strongly built, rarely less than five feet two or three inches tall. The slaves, however, on an average, were four feet three to four feet six. Such a difference is undoubtedly due to the prostitution to which these unfortunates are condemned as soon as they are mature. The women of most races are distinguished by their delicacy, but in New Zealand their general appearance is diametrically opposed to our ideas of beauty. The girls, in their first bloom, are characterised by broad faces, masculine features, thick lips often black with tattooing, wide mouths, flat noses, badly arranged, untidy hair, general dirtiness, and bodies impregnated with a stomach-turning odour of fish or seal. But this repellent picture is partly redeemed by

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some precious advantages given to them by nature, and their dazzling white teeth and black eyes, full of fire and expression, are in fact powerful attractions wherever they are found. Besides, their effect is greatly enhanced by an advantage which is very rare among civilised women. The young New Zealand women, who in their happy ignorance know nothing of the use of bodices, have breasts which rival marble in their firmness, and which remain elastic and firm in spite of their fullness. These organs have no effect on the men's feelings; in their eyes they are only the reservoirs from which their children draw life. Hard work, bad food, child-bearing, precocious and frequent indulgence bring about the early disappearance of the good condition and freshness of youth, and all the old women we had occasion to see were made repulsive by the general flabbiness of their flesh.

Neither the women nor the men pluck out their hair, and the latter certainly do not practise circumcision.

There are not many old people. The warlike habits of these tribes and the frequent conflicts in which they indulge are obstacles to the individual's reaching the fulness of his years.

The cold climate makes it impossible for the New Zealanders to take baths; they are therefore disgustingly dirty. The bodies of the women, particularly the young slave-girls, whose duty it is to gut the fish to be dried, are covered with a thick layer of scum, giving off a penetrating odour which is all the more repulsive when it is mingled, as it often is, with the smell of seal or porpoise oil, with which they rub their bodies and cover them with ochre dust. This last custom is remarkable in that one finds it only among dark peoples. However, most of the New Zealanders seem to cover their hair with red dust, and the ones we saw adorned in this way all belonged to villages a long way from Marion Bay, and came from the interior of the island.

The habit of uncleanliness is deeply rooted in these people, for with very little effort they could rid themselves of the vermin which devour them, and of the filth which covers them. Both men and women are excellent swimmers, but it is only out of necessity and rarely for pleasure that they throw themselves into the water. The women keep the phormium waistcloths which gird their loins until they are quite worn out; they do not take them off to sleep, nor even when they are squatting in the water at the bottom of the canoes, among fish-heads and intestines.

The New Zealanders' dress varies very little according to sex. But as these islands afford none of the precious trees with textile bark which the Tahitians use to make their light and attractive clothing-paper, 116 these people have turned to other materials, and the mats they weave

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from the fibres of the phormium tenax are of rare beauty, both in the material of which they are made and in workmanship. One of these mats hangs casually over the shoulders and the body; this is called tatata. 117 A second is wrapped round the body and comes down to the knees. In the winters, which are extremely hard in these antarctic islands, they add over the upper mat a coarse, heavy cloth made of many tufts of a sort of rush fibre, which resemble the tufts of wool on the collars of European cart-horses. This garment is called toi, 118 The chiefs wear instead a cloak made of dog-skins sewn together, the kahou ouairo. 119 The working of the mats varies; they are often smooth and undecorated, but sometimes remarkable for their delicate patterns. Very long, unbeaten phormium leaves are often attached to the waist-cloths, particularly those of the young slave-girls, and do much to make this part of the body appear disproportionately wide.

The rank and prestige of the New Zealand warriors is indicated by a great number of little pieces of carved and polished bone or jet, hung on the chest at the edge of the mat. Their true and original purpose was to scratch in the hair and kill the insects which live there. Finally, like other peoples, they are fond of finery, and their favourite adornment consists of placing feathers in the hair, and especially a tuft of white, silky feathers or, more often, scraps of cloth, in the ear. The head is never covered by any kind of head-dress, and the hair hangs in disorder, quite unaided by art. However, some young girls, evidently more stylish than their companions, came to visit us, their heads crowned with garlands of very pretty, bright green moss.

The women's ornaments consist of necklaces made of shells called piré, which sometimes have little dried sea-horses hanging from them. They have a pronounced liking for European-made blue-glass beads, and seek them avidly. But the most precious jewel is worn only by the men, and religious meaning is attached to its possession. It is the green jade fetish representing a hideous face, which hangs on the chest, suspended from some fragment of human bone. 120 It is again out of superstition that they attach to their ears the sharp tooth of that glutton of the sea, the shark. The women use these to tear their faces and breasts to show their deep sorrow at the loss of chiefs or relatives. The islanders attach the greatest importance to the preservation of these objects when they have been handed down by their ancestors and are taboo or sacred, and they believe that their happiness in life is connected with them. But on the other hand if they come from their enemies, having been

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stripped from their dead bodies, they will unconcernedly trade them, and for trifles.

We have already had occasion to mention that the New Zealanders of some parts of the interior cover their faces and eyes with a thick paint made of ochre dust, mixed with cetacean oil. This custom is somewhat rare, but the same cannot be said of the practice of putting large beauty-spots on the nose, the chin and the cheeks -- black for the boys, and sky-blue for the young girls. This last adornment is called para-eka-ouaiaoua. 121 It should not be thought that these details are without importance; in conjunction with other facts they are sometimes very necessary for characterising the customs of a race. Besides, would it not ill become us to criticise tribes whose civilisation has remained stationary when the European nations are made far more ridiculous by the whim of fashion?

All men need to modify the advantages they have been given by nature, and this need is keenly felt by the New Zealanders. Throughout their lives they are concerned with tattooing or moko, and every year they submit to the painful operation it requires. This tattooing is all the more remarkable because it usually covers the face, and as it is renewed very frequently it produces deep furrows in regular circles, giving the features the strangest expression. The inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands and the New Zealanders are the only peoples who tattoo their faces deeply; 122 the Tahitians have lost this custom and lavish this ornamentation on their bodies instead, while the New Zealanders place it only on the buttocks, arranging it in circles twined inside one another. The women have their loins covered with lozenge shapes forming a wide band, but as well as this they add to their hard and forbidding features patterns which most certainly make them no more beautiful. Thus their lips are furrowed with intensely black lines, and with patterns like spear-heads deeply imprinted at the corners of the mouth and in the centre of the chin. Only slaves captured young or the lowest class of men are completely without tattooing. None of the other natives could abstain from this custom without shame, and the more famous a warrior, the more often he has undergone the renewal of this operation and the prouder he is of an emblem which is never obtained without suffering intense pain.

Domestic architecture -- and by this we mean the art of building huts -- has been rather ingeniously adapted by the New Zealanders to their climate and to their warlike customs. Their dwellings, instead of being spacious and airy, which would be disadvantageous in a country

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lashed by the tempests of the southern hemisphere, are small and low, and their villages or hippahs are never situated on the plains, where they could be attacked in a surprise raid, but are always on the topmost points of steep hills and cliffs, places with difficult approaches. These huts are lairs which can be entered only by crawling on hands and knees, and the families they shelter sleep pell-mell on the straw in a very restricted space, where the breathing of several people easily maintains the warmth necessary to prevent the outside cold from entering. Inside there is no furniture, with the exception of a few finely carved chests and a few red wood vases, covered with patterns, like those in the illustrations to Cook's account. 123

This people's most highly developed and remarkable industry is the manufacture of fabrics. It is possible to trace the wise foresight of nature in the variety of raw materials to be found in the different parts of Oceania, for in tropical islands like Tahiti, Tonga, the Marquesas, the Sandwich Islands, where the temperature is uniformly hot, she has provided textile barks, suitable for making light, soft fabrics, while in New Zealand, where the winters are extremely cold, she has produced the phormium. It is with the fibres of this plant, far superior to our best linen, that the women, particularly the young girls taken from their families as a result of the misfortunes of war, painstakingly weave their mati or elegant mats, called kahou when they serve as clothing, and koura, kupenga, etc, according to the parts of the body they are intended to cover. 124 The phormium fibres, carefully cleaned of the sticky substance which clogs them, have a satin sheen, and the mats, ornamented with designs, when they are draped form a garment which is not without similarity to the ancient civil costume of the Romans.

Worthy of mention among the useful articles which they make for their daily needs are the coarse straw mats with which they cover their shoulders in rainy weather, and the rush bags in which they keep their various supplies. The method of preparing the fibres of the phormium is also most remarkable for its simplicity, while all the experiments performed by scientists to the praiseworthy end of utilising a plant which is so precious in Europe have not succeeded in producing those same fibres with all the qualities which distinguish those which result from the New Zealanders' process. After cutting the long leaves of the linen plant (this is the name which Cook gives the phormium in his account of his voyages), they leave them to soak in water for a few days,

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and then crush them with a very hard wooden mallet on an oval block of the same wood. This preliminary process is called harenga 125 and serves to remove the chlorophyll or green, resinous matter from the upper side of the fibres. True, this removal is incomplete, but then they are careful to scrape them vigorously with the sharpened edge of the vulva of a shell, and succeed in removing the particles of that substance which would remove their suppleness. Cleansed in this way of their covering layer, the phormium fibres have the golden colour of the finest linen, and the softness and almost the strength of silk.

The two islands in which the New Zealanders dwell, although they are not situated in high latitudes, nevertheless suffer the effects of a rigorous climate, with fierce winds which blow for much of the year and snows which cover the elevated ground. The natives of these islands soon realised how necessary it was to make provisions for the winter. In fine weather they take great quantities of fish in the bays which fragment the coastline, so they dry and smoke most of it for eating when it is impossible to put to sea in the canoes, and as a measure against famine when their hippahs are besieged by enemy tribes.

The soil does not provide a great variety of foodstuffs of its own accord, as it does in the tropical islands, and the New Zealanders' staple of life proves to be the woody root of a fern which covers all the plains, and which is exactly like our pteris. 126 Today the natives make use of several vegetables introduced by Europeans, and the light soil suits them so well that they grow almost unattended. Among them are sweet potatoes, 127 potatoes and radishes. Supplementary foods in their diet are shellfish, lobsters, sometimes pigs, and, very commonly, dogs. The flesh of their enemies, killed on the battlefield and devoured with so much pleasure, is not thought of as food at all, but rather as an accessory to the mysteries of religion. 128

Their cooking is as simple as the nature of their foods. It is no different from that of other Oceanians, and consists in roasting the food on coals or in oumous or ovens 129 hollowed out of the ground and filled with hot stones. They make a kind of bread called taro from the root of the fern eroi, Forster's acrostichum furcatum. 130 These roots are gath-

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ered by slaves who lay them on hurdles to dry in the sun to be made into bread; they are pounded in a wooden mortar and mashed until they are just a yellowish-brown paste, sticky as glue, and full of particles of wood or bark. This paste is moulded into cylinders like liquorice sticks and has very little nutritional value; in this respect it must resemble the bread which the Irish make from pine bark. We saw the New Zealanders eating half-rotten, stinking fish with great relish, but the most remarkable thing is their custom of pressing and tying up in leaves large numbers of little fish in the same way that the Tahitians prepare their banana preserves.

These tribes drink nothing but pure water; they hate strong drinks, and if some of the men, or even the young girls, drink spirits, they have acquired this pernicious habit while staying on board European ships. They usually eat three meals a day, and call dinner kainga dua and supper kai ahi-ahi. 131 Their food is placed on the ground, and they break it with their fingers. The warriors sometimes use implements made of human bones, taken from enemies slain on the battlefield; thus we bought from one of them a four-pronged fork made from the radius bone of a right arm, painstakingly carved and decorated with various raised designs in mother-of-pearl. 132

These tribes use nets which are exactly like ours, and there are three kinds. Their seine-nets, made of phormium leaves, have an enormous capacity and usually remain the property of all the inhabitants of a village. Their hooks, made of a stalk of hard wood and armed with barbed, pointed bones, are sometimes fashioned out of pieces of mother-of-pearl. 133 The lines from which they hang are very well corded and of considerable strength.

Their canoes or waka are remarkable for the carvings which decorate them. Today the inhabitants of the north, who have obtained a great number of iron implements through their frequent contacts with Europeans, neglect their construction. Most of these light craft are hollowed out of a single tree-trunk, and are usually up to forty feet long. Near Kaouera we measured one which, formed of a single piece of wood, was sixty feet long, three feet deep, and four feet wide. They are painted red and decorated with feathers arranged in festoons along the sides; the stern is nearly four feet high and consists of allegorical sculptures surmounting the likeness of a man holding his lingam in his right hand; the prow is taken up by a hideous head with mother-of-

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pearl eyes and an enormous tongue protruding from its mouth, which to these tribes signifies aggressive courage in war and scorn of enemies. These canoes are long enough to take forty warriors; they are almost always simple, not yoked together, and the oars, or oe, 134 which are used to propel them across the water terminate in very sharp points, so that if the crew were taken by surprise they could use them as convenient weapons to defend themselves against attacks. The canoes are very speedy when driven by winds or by rapid strokes of the oars. The sails used by the New Zealanders are just coarsely woven, triangular rush mats called oe-hia 135 or wind-paddles, and are quite useless for sailing close to the wind.

Although the New Zealanders are extremely fond of war, although it is their life's occupation, they have by no means a great variety of methods of destruction. Their valour consists in hand-to-hand attack and the triumph of strength, and they scorn those light arms, those sharp-pointed arrows shot from behind bushes, which always signify the combination of treachery and weakness. They scalp their enemies or break their skulls with their green jade patous-patous, or spear them with their long javelins. This patou-patou, attached to the wrist by a leather thong, is the New Zealand warrior's weapon par excellence. As a mark of their sacerdotal function, the arikis or priests have a large weapon made of whale-bone and covered with carvings. 136 Their tokis are axes, these too made of jade, with the most meticulously worked handles, decorated with tufts of pure white dog-hair. Many of their clubs are made of very hard, polished, red wood, and some chiefs replace them with bludgeons worked in the same manner. We have already said that the palisaded hippahs are always situated on the sharp, craggy ridges of steep places, and the natives charged with their defence rain a hail of big rocks on their attackers, but they mainly drive them back with very long, sharp javelins, which are usually fifteen to twenty feet in length and sometimes more.

The Bay of Islands, situated in the northern part of New Zealand, is a very convenient port of call for the ships which furrow the great ocean, and is therefore much frequented by English and American whalers. The numerous tribes which live on its shores, and which are connected by family ties, have realised what an immense advantage they would have if they possessed guns and powder. This is the price they put on the fresh food which they supply to visiting European ships, and the muskets they have already obtained have enabled them

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to wage war successfully on the neighbouring tribes, and to sack the hippahs for quite a distance round them. Of all European inventions that of firearms seems to them the most sublime and the most marvellous; it is the only one to have earned their approval.

We have never understood the word savage, as it is used in Europe, to designate peoples whose civilisation is stationary. All these savages have a culture, however rudimentary it may be. They recognise superior authorities, they have long-established concepts of society, they practise the fine arts, and know the names and properties of the products of their soil. Now let us compare these so-called savages with our own peasants! The New Zealanders also have their own fine arts; not those of raising pyramids, building palaces, or recreating history's finest moments on canvas, but those which they are able to cultivate by tradition in spite of the paucity of their resources. These fruits of their leisure, this cultivation of the spirit, this moral perfecting of civilisation, would seem to be incompatible with this people's warlike customs and destructive instinct, and yet they are more advanced in singing, sculpture and poetry than in those arts which are more immediately useful in terms of the primary needs of life.

The New Zealanders' singing is solemn and monotonous, and is composed of slow, broken, guttural notes; it is always accompanied by movements of the eyes and measured, very meaningful gestures. But if their singing was far from having the advantage of pleasing us, ours certainly did not win their approval. They received our most popular ballads with the coldest indifference, and the tough fibres of their souls were not in the least shaken by the martial airs which delight and excite a European. However, if before these impassive men their own battle-song had been struck up, they would have been possessed by rage and frenzy, so true is it that local memories and ideas are mingled in the effect produced by music. Most of their songs turn on very licentious subjects, and let it be said in passing that this taste is very pronounced in all men, and has been masked in civilised people only by the disguise of allusions and ambiguities. The New Zealanders, like the other Oceanians, see nothing improper in calling things by their names, and these things never excite in them, as they do in us, those tumultous and disturbed emotions which are suppressed but not destroyed by the curb of decorum.

Their dance or héiva 137 is a pantomime in which the actors rarely change their position, and consists of gestures or movements of the limbs, performed with the greatest precision. In fact the young warriors usually line up side by side; one of them sings the words and the group

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of dancers responds with differently accentuated cries; they all make rapid movements of the head, the eyes, the arms, the legs and especially the fingers, very precisely controlled and varied by the rhythm. Each dance has an allegorical meaning and is performed only in the proper circumstances: for the declaration of war, a human sacrifice, a funeral, etc. The women, whose sex inclines them to sweeter ways, have brought the functions they are destined to fulfil in this world into their games. Thus their dances consist of immoderate movements which cannot be described, and we will confine ourselves to noting one consecrated to Oure; 138 or Phallus.

The only musical instruments we saw in the hands of the New Zealanders were flutes, usually made of wood and tastefully worked. Portions of the thigh-bone are sometimes used for making them, in commemoration of some victory over the men of a neighbouring tribe. Finally we noticed that the children play with tops like ours, using a whip to turn them. This passing comment, taken together with a greater body of information, will doubtless be useful some day.

The sweet, sonorous and very musical language of the Oceanians has undergone some modifications in New Zealand. The sounds, full of softness in Tahiti, have here acquired a harder pronunciation, due to the introduction of consonants, particularly the letters k, h, n, g and w. 139 By oral tradition the inhabitants have passed on many poems of great antiquity, of which the origin and even the allegorical meaning are unknown to them. The most celebrated of them is the famous funeral ode or pihe, which begins with this line: Papa ra te ouati tidi, etc. 140 Like the Tahitians, they can improvise on all sorts of subjects, and their annals are songs in which they preserve the memory of important happenings, the appearance of navigators on their shores, and the various events in their history, or the deeds of their warriors. The women, naturally playful, ironically criticise incorrect pronunciation in their couplets or ridicule outsiders by making epigrams on the customs which jar with their prejudices. Thus the girls who lived with the sailors of the corvette La Coquille, and who received only a portion of their lovers' food in payment for their co-operation, overwhelmed them with sarcasms, singing couplets starting with these words: Tayo di taro, etc. 141

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To give an idea of these tribes' turn of mind, we think it useful to quote a little poem which was translated into English by Mr Kendall, the missionary, who lived in New Zealand for a long time, and who, more than any of his colleagues, is able to furnish us with positive and interesting details concerning the natives' beliefs.

WAI ATA (SONG OF DEVOTION)

'I climbed to the steep tops of the mountains to observe your departure, O Taoua, and the rough winds which blew from the tempestuous north made a profound impression on my soul, anxious about your fate. The roaring wave rolls every day on the shore, and seems to come from the far country of Stivers, while you sail at the pleasure of the winds, and as an exile from your native land pursue your course towards the regions where the sun rises. On my shoulders floats as a sweet souvenir the garment you wore, left with me by you as the pledge of your love. Whatever be the place to which you make your way, there my affection shall follow you for ever.' 142

When sculpture is not the fruit of civilisation, it seems to be the first step towards it, and as it is the material representation of beings, it is more or less crude among all those peoples who are close to the primitive human condition. In New Zealand this art bears witness to formed taste and principle, for they often produce the same patterns, the same shapes, in the same proportions. What a long time must have been spent on the carved decorations of their canoes! The processes by which they have succeeded in polishing very hard jade and transforming it into idols, admittedly hideous, betoken great ability and are unknown to us, although it is undeniable that patience and time have made an important contribution.

The faith professed by the New Zealanders in the divinity is by no

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'Inhabitants of New Zealand, with a view of their fortified place or Pa. 10 April 1824'. Blosseville and Le Jeune travelled from Kerikeri to Paroa on 10 April 1824; it was no doubt on this passage that Lejeune drew the canoe and pa depicted in the illustration.

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means clear to us. However, as far as it is possible to judge by the variety of their dogmas, it must be supposed that their religion is very-ancient, and consists of a set of many highly developed ideas, corrupted only by isolation after their separation from the race from which they are descended. The New Zealanders have an old tradition which tells them that their forefathers left a very large island to come and live in New Zealand, 143 but only a man of learning fixed in these islands could do the arduous research necessary to lift the veil which obscures their origins and traditions. Kendall, the missionary, might possibly have been able to render great service in this field if he had not related the beliefs of the New Zealanders exclusively to the trinitary system of Pythagoras, considering them to be a colony of Egyptians. 144

In our general remarks on the Oceanian race we have already propounded the opinion that its various branches were born on the shores of the Indus, in the early days of their civilisation. 145 Our point of view is supported by the jade image which they wear hanging round their necks, the circles, reminiscent of the serpent Calingam, which they retain in their sculptures, the lingam, which appears to play an important part in their mythology; finally, many of their ideas belong to Sabaism, and spring from the ancient mystic traditions of the Brahmins.

New Zealand's principal gods are: God the father, God the son, and God the bird or spirit. God the father is the most powerful and is called Nui atua, master of the world. 146 All the others are subordinate to him, but each native has his atua, a kind of secondary divinity who corresponds fairly closely to the guardian angel of Christian faiths. The priests are called arikis, and are sometimes designated by the name tané tohonga or wise man. Their women who fulfil the functions of priestesses are the wahine ariki or wahine tohonga or wise women. 147 Each hippah has

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a hut, larger than those of the inhabitants, called ware atua 148 or house of God, where the sacred food, a o kai tou, 149 is received, and where prayers, karakia, are said.

The religious ceremonies are usually performed by the arikis whose voices openly and publicly invoke the protection of Atua. They firmly believe in dreams, which they think have been sent to them by the divinity, and all difficult questions are decided by the priests, the only interpreters of the heavenly will. The different tribes, in their continual wars, never engage in hostilities without interrogating oui-doua 150 or the holy spirit in a ceremony called karakia tanga. 151 They seem to consecrate the most important stages in their lives by religious ceremonies; thus when a child is born the relatives assemble to turn the occasion into a family festival at which they pronounce maxims and try to predict a happy future for the child. Mr Kendall thinks Christian baptism is to be seen in this ceremony, which they call toinga, and even goes so far as to say that they sprinkle the children with holy water, ouai tapu, or ouai toi, or baptismal water. 152 Their marriage also receives a kind of religious sanction, 153 and their death is girt about with funeral prayers. Mr Kendall believes even the sacred banquet of human flesh to be an imitation, admittedly in an extremely corrupt form, of communion in both kinds. 154 But here we terminate our observations, for fear of losing ourselves in the citation of facts with which we are not perfectly conversant.

The New Zealanders have many characteristics in common with the Spartans. They are indifferent towards life, and face death with courage and dignity. All their thoughts turn on battle, the pleasure of their whole life, so from a very early age a child's imagination is inflamed by tales of the exploits of his relatives and friends, and an insatiable thirst for dangers and perils is born in his heart. The little boy soon learns the value of his own dignity; he knows that no woman has the right to raise a hand against him, that if he strikes his mother she will not dare to complain, 155 that by maltreating his slaves he can give a foretaste of the

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terror he will bring to neighbouring tribes on the day of battle. An oddity, however, is the fact that the higher the rank of the mother, the more illustrious is the child, because it is from her that he derives his title to nobility. 156 Arikis, or priests, or old men renowned for their learning, always supervise the education of the chiefs' sons; they are the ones who initiate them into the mysteries of their religion. Their lessons, like the poems of the ancient Nordic skalds, are set in a kind of rhythmic verse, and turn on warriors' exploits, the number of their victims, and the bliss they enjoy in the ata-mira, the celestial paradise. 157 When they are about twelve years old these young adepts attend meetings of the chiefs and listen to their deliberations; from this they acquire a habit of meditation and reflection, and they become eager to achieve fame by performing glorious deeds. We were very often astonished to see young boys come on board and run all over the ship among the seamen without appearing to be timid or surprised; their bearing was always assured. When they are eighteen or twenty they become members of the tribe of warriors; at this time they build a hut beside their father's, they marry, and paternal authority comes to an end.

Marriages are arranged by purchase; the intending husband must give presents to the family of his fiancée. Most of the natives, especially those of lower rank, have only one wife, but it seems that the custom of polygamy is allowed to the rangatira, for the famous Shongi has several wives. Toui, chief of the hippah near La Coquille's anchorage, had bought his wife with two muskets and a male slave, although she belonged to a distinguished family; in return he received his bride and a number of mats made of New Zealand linen, and also three family slaves to look after his wife because of her high rank. The lower-class inhabitants give less valuable presents; moreover they usually have only one wife. Adultery is severely punished when it occurs without the husband's consent; this, it is true, is obtainable by means of gifts. As for the unmarried women, they are mistresses of their own bodies, and are free to bring happiness to as many men as they wish. On the other hand the owners of young slave-girls consecrate them to prostitution, and the chiefs themselves are not above sending them on board European ships by the canoe-load, and holding out their hands for the profits of a kind of trade that we are accustomed to consider far from honourable. The ariki blesses marriages with a kind of religious ceremony. 158 The Protestant missionaries in New Zealand say that even a sort of baptism

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is performed at the birth of a child. 159 Although in the eyes of these warlike islanders women are only creatures of an inferior order, provided for the conservation of the species, they are nevertheless consulted in any serious situation, and the wife of an ariki, like a druidess of ancient times, shares her husband's priestly power.

We shall say nothing of the levity with which these tribes treat what we call modesty; this virtue is merely the result of civilisation, and while the account we could give of the brutish customs of man in his primitive state would undoubtedly be an entertaining one, it would also shock the least fastidious of readers. The New Zealanders and all the South Sea islanders, as well as the historical documents of ancient and modern peoples, provide us with confirmation of the ideas that man, having the nature of an animal, is under the sway of physical needs which cannot always be controlled or moderated by the intelligence. In this connexion the New Zealanders are astonishingly salacious.

Natives of the same tribe have a very lively affection for each other, and we often witnessed the way in which they demonstrate this feeling. Thus for example if one of them came on board and met someone he had not seen for some time, he approached him in gloomy silence, placed the tip of his nose on his friend's, and remained thus for half an hour dismally muttering a jumble of words between his teeth. After this they parted, and for the rest of the time acted like two men who were complete strangers to each other. The women observe the same ceremonial among themselves, and this nasal greeting, which is called ongi, 160 is certainly the strangest of formalities. But what astonished us even more was the indifference with which the natives witnessed those who were exchanging these marks of friendship in their midst. It is as remarkable as that calm and solemn bearing which Asiatic peoples retain in all circumstances of their lives and carry right to the heart of their pleasures, and which so well befits the dignity of man.

If the New Zealanders show by their emotions that they are alive to the gentler passions, the history of their lives as a whole proves on the other hand that they retain and nourish the desire to avenge an insult longer than any other people. A New Zealander's sole maxim seems to be that time can never efface an insult, but only revenge. This vicious principle, with which every native is imbued, and which rules the political conduct of the families, gives rise to the eternal hatreds and perpetual wars which ravage these islands. The loss of relatives or distinguished chiefs is keenly felt by the whole tribe; the people, in mourning, give themselves to a lugubrious ceremony which lasts several days,

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and when the deceased is of high rank, captives are always sacrificed so that they may serve him in the next world. The women and girls and female slaves rend their breasts, their arms, and their faces, furrowing the skin with a sharpened shark's tooth, a sacred object which they wear hanging from their ears; the more the blood streams over their bodies, the more this offering is supposed to be pleasing to the dead man; from time to time, at regular intervals, they renew these signs of sorrow. When we asked the young girls for an explanation of this custom, they limited themselves to replying, 'Atoua wants us to weep'. These people profess the most religious respect for their dead; they embalm them with a skill which is nowhere equalled, and which is far superior to the technique used for preserving mummies. They usually bury them in the tombs which each family reserves for itself, or sometimes, for lower-class people, they do what they call tutere and waha atu and put the body into a canoe which they launch into the open sea. 161

Every tribe of New Zealanders constitutes a sort of republic, and each individual is independent of every other man. The districts are controlled by an immediate chief whose title is recognised only in time of war. He has no particular power in his own village, no authority over the meanest islander, except that he does no work and is entitled to receive a tithe of other families' provisions. But apart from that he has only the slaves he obtains for himself on the battlefield, and no other prerogative apart from the tattooing which denotes his rank and which no one else is allowed to bear. He is shown no regard, no particular sign of respect, when he arrives among the warriors. When a chief dies he is succeeded not by his children but by his brothers in order of birth. Usually the man named as chief is the one with the most widespread reputation for bravery, daring and wisdom. In the army heed is given to his advice as to methods of attack. He has no means of assembling his warriors and making war apart from the shame which attaches to those who refuse to follow him into battle, but when he plans an invasion it rarely happens that his simple statement of his intention and his reasons for it do not suffice to muster the fighters. When Atoua (God) requires war, there are no differences of opinion. The chiefs of each tribe form a council to which are admitted the priests and even the common warriors who enjoy a reputation gained in combat. The bodies of slain chiefs, whose heads are preserved as emblems, serve as offerings in the sacrifices. Their wives are delivered to the enemy to suffer the same fate, or they deliver themselves up. If they die a natural death, human victims are immolated on their graves.

The most horrifying custom we have to report is that of cannibalism,

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which the New Zealanders practise more openly and in a more revolting fashion than any other people. Avid for slaughter and vengeance, these ferocious men relish with lively enjoyment the palpitating flesh of enemies who have fallen under their blows. As a result of these abominable customs, they have acquired a taste for human flesh, and the circumstances in which they can take their fill of it are for them days of rejoicing and solemn festivals. A chief of the Kaouri hippah, on Ou-Motou-Arohia Island, 162 even told us of the delight he took in eating a cadaver; he recommended the brain as the most delicate morsel, and the buttock as the most filling, but, perceiving our horror, he pulled himself up and affirmed that they never ate Europeans (Pateka), 163 but only the wicked men from the River Thames and Mercury Bay. He told us almost caressingly that the Europeans were their fathers, because they provided them with powder to kill their enemies. The bodies of natives killed in battle are always eaten, but it is not clear whether they eat the flesh of the slaves they sacrifice in various situations.

These customs, of unparalleled ferocity, seem to have held sway from very ancient times among these people who live only for war, and form a sort of code which cannot be violated without transgressing the laws of honour. Almost every moment of their lives is occupied with war. 164 The slightest pretext is enough to make them declare war, but the least reverse or a simple act of reparation may induce the enemies to retire. Quarrels last for many years, and the present generation will often carry out an invasion to avenge the defeat of their fathers. In some districts they have been known to fight over affairs which took place more than sixty years before. Their grudges are very strong; each day, far from bringing them to forget an insult, merely nourishes the thirst for vengeance which can be satisfied only by the blood of the offender.

Their wars are the result of animosity, and their goal is loot and the desire to obtain a food their stomachs crave. So they fall on their enemies in the greatest possible numbers, and try to take them by surprise and cut them to pieces. Sometimes they issue a challenge to be settled in a specified place. Battle is never opened until the arikis have said prayers and made offerings to their gods, and have obtained their

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approval. To obtain their support slaves are sacrificed. When the formalities are complete, the warriors intone their war-chant, putting out their tongues as a sign of defiance and scorn, uttering great cries and working themselves into a fury. The fray is rarely of long duration, and at the first fusillade, when a fair number of men have been killed, the vanquished beat a retreat, or if the battle continues with greater vigour and ferocity, the warriors engage in hand-to-hand combat, and the number of victims is more considerable.

The victorious side chants its triumph on the battlefield and then they prepare the frightful sacrifices which must be offered to their disgusting divinities. The chiefs' bodies are prepared, and when the arikis and the gods have taken their share the head remains for the victor, who keeps it as a trophy of his victory. The flesh is eaten and the bones distributed for the making of implements. If the enemies have so contested the terrain that they have managed to gather up the bodies of their dead and of their chief during their retreat, they are required to return them or be attacked immediately. If they have been intimidated by their defeat they obey, and add the wife and children of the chief; the first is killed and eaten, and the children are either slain or given into bondage. Nearly every dead chief's wife believes that she owes his spirit the sacrifice of her life and gives herself up to the enemy, knowing that she cannot hope for mercy, an example of fanaticism which resembles Indian customs.

At the same time the common warriors lying on the ground are scalped with the patou-patou, cut in pieces, roasted and eaten. If they have enjoyed some reputation, their heads are treated and sold to Europeans in exchange for powder. 165 The tribes remain on the battlefield as long as the supply of human flesh lasts. This food, through which the natives believe they acquire the courage of the dead man, restores their physical strength which has been exhausted by fatigue and privation. Throughout this horrible banquet the warriors abandon themselves to the most appalling joy, and so that they will not be alone in celebrating the victory they send their families part of the feast. But when the distance is such that the flesh would be rotten when it arrived, they touch it with a sacred stick which they send to their friends so that they also can touch roots or fish with it; they think that the virtue and flavour of human flesh may be transmitted by these means.

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Sometimes the prisoners taken by these tribes are kept and reduced to the hardest servitude. They are the ones who go fishing, grow potatoes, pull up fern roots. Their lives are never secure; they are slaughtered at their masters' whim, and they are usually used as sacrificial victims when their possessors die. Three were killed at the death of Korokoro, and seven will be when Songhi dies. The daughter of this latter chief, whose husband was killed in a quarrel, avenged herself by helping her brother to massacre twenty-three prisoners in their sleep. 166 At the time of our visit a bloodthirsty warrior showed us several prisoners he had taken with his own hand, and strenuously urged us to accept a strong, robust young man, asking in return only one musket. English ships in need of seamen often obtain a number of slaves in exchange for powder and guns.

A chief's head serves his tribe as a sort of emblem. The prouder the victors are of possessing it, the more the vanquished, especially his own family, miss it. It is treated, then preserved with care, and when the winning tribe want peace, they send the chief's head to the tribe he commanded. If the tribesmen utter great cries when they see the head, this signifies that they wish to enter into an agreement and accept the conditions. If on the other hand they gaze at it mournfully and in profound silence, this means that they seek to avenge his death, that any agreement is repugnant to them, that in fact they want to continue the hostilities; the battle then recommences. Nevertheless it is a great consolation to the vanquished to know that the victors preserve the heads of fallen warriors; they can hope to repossess them one day. When they are sold to them they preserve them religiously and revere them, but since they have found a good market for them among the Europeans there are few that have not been sold.

Toui showed us the head of a chief of the River Thames which he was keeping to pass on to his son.

These people profess the most profound indifference for death; they face it with an astonishing coolness, and perhaps none of them has ever considered that one day he will be treated as he treats others. Once they are inflamed with the idea of slaughter they are fiercer than the tigers of the African deserts; they have only one goal, one thought, to punish their enemy, and their only regret is that they cannot devour him while revelling in his torments and his cries.

The custom of preserving heads is not an unique characteristic of the New Zealanders; it is found in Ceram and Borneo, but the New Zealanders have an extremely simple method of preservation which does not appear to be used anywhere else. They call this embalming

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moko-mokai, 167 and even have different names for the smoke which issues from the nostrils, the eyes and the ears during this process. To preserve a head, they cut it at the upper part of the neck; then they break the corresponding occipital part, forming a large circle. They remove the internal bony portions, such as those which form the orbital, nasal and palatal vaults; in the end they keep only the external bony portions which support the teguments of the face. They tear out all internal flesh and membrances, especially the brain and the parts annexed to it. When the interior is perfectly clean, they stitch the eyelids or close them with a kind of glue, place hemp in the nostrils, and surround the lower opening with a border of fabric or wood. The head is now placed in a well-sheltered spot and exposed to the action of smoke and slow heat, which slowly and successively dry its teguments. When it has attained the desired degree of dryness they anoint it with oil and shut it up in the safest place in their huts, being careful to take it out from time to time, so that it does not contract through humidity. The longer their hair, the more perfect their tattooing, the greater the reputation of the warriors they belonged to, the more the heads prepared in this way are sought after. They are less religiously conserved since the Europeans began to buy them, and it often happens that slaves are sacrificed for the purpose of selling their heads.

As a French author has sensibly remarked, compassion appears to be a feeling which never enters the heart of a New Zealander. Every foreigner who arrives on their shores, whether driven by tempest or drawn by curiosity, is fated to a cruel death. The inhabitants of the north are the only ones who willingly allow Europeans to stay among them, because they have need of them, but the inhabitants of the south have proved to be intractable. Every voyager who navigated these coasts was the object of the hostile propensities of these savage, perfidious, treacherous natives, who seem to have no law but that of force and violence.

Tasman in 1642 lost four men, and called his anchorage Murderers' Bay. 168 In 1769 Surville was attacked, and was obliged to have recourse to the superiority of his means of defence. 169 Furneaux, captain of the Adventure, lost nine men in Cook Strait. 170 Cook himself was constantly

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exposed to the natives' attacks and threats of extermination, and with a moderation foreign to his violent nature he limited himself to letting them feel his superior strength, and did not have the ears of prisoners cut off, as he did to natives in the Society Islands. Cook visited these islands in 1769 and 1770. 171 Captain Marion visited the Bay of Islands, which the French call Marion Bay, about 1772; it is well known that he was slain with twenty-nine of his crew. 172 Since that time many whaling ships have been captured and their crews massacred; the list of Europeans devoured by these cannibals would form a long martyrology. Among the remarkable events of this sort, we shall mention only the capture in 1816 of the Boyd, commanded by Captain Tompson, 173 and that of the ships of Captain Howel, whom we saw at Port Jackson, and who himself gave us details of it. This navigator, who commanded the brig Trial and the schooner La Félicité, dropped anchor in the River Thames on 30 November 1815. The natives took advantage of some negligence on the part of the seamen charged with watching their movements, slaughtered the men on the bridge, cut the cables, and ran the vessels aground, but the crew members who had retreated to the orlop were saved by the fact that they had taken the precaution of putting the guns in this part of the ship. Through the hatches the seamen were able to take aim calmly at any native who presented himself and shoot him without fear of missing. In this way they swept the impudent fellows from the bridge and drove the natives back as far as the bow, where a sustained burst of fire forced those who escaped it to throw themselves into the sea. 174

Some more or less enlightened philanthropists have long discoursed on the way to put an end to the practice of cannibalism. Most of them denied that this abominable custom existed and believed that human nature was being maligned, regarding this aberration as a fiction invented by voyagers. We shall not attempt to refute these fanciful ideas, produced by the dreams of peace-loving men, happy by the family hearth they have never let out of their sight. It is said that a Scottish gentleman, inflamed by the desire to civilise the New Zealanders, embarked in 1782 with sixty peasants and all the equipment necessary

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for the cultivation of the soil. His project was to establish himself on the shores of the River Thames or in Mercury Bay, and to teach the natives to clear their land, but he has never been heard of since. 175

The New Zealanders' ideas of medicine seemed to us to be somewhat limited. However, their warlike customs should have made them aware of the need to apply remedies to the large wounds caused by the blows of their patous-patous. Their habit of finishing off the wounded and eating the vanquished undoubtedly accounts for the fact that the warriors have very few scars. When attacked by internal maladies in their hippahs, they resort to a strict diet and drink the juices of plants which they call rongoa or tonics. In desperate cases their only hope lies in the prayers of the arikis, although some of their compatriots are charged with the preparation of remedies, and dignified by the name of Tangata-rongoa. Their most common illnesses, or mate, are elephantiasis, pulmonary consumption, and catarrhs of every variety. When their limbs are fractured they support them with splints made from the bark of trees, and twice a day subject the limb to steam imbued with herbal qualities, made by throwing wet leaves on burning coals. The children often suffer from umbilical hernias, and the old people are frequently subject to ophthalmia, cramps or keke, and gravel or kiddi-kiddi. Sores are called openga rara, pregnancy apou, while health, or that happy state of true equilibrium of all the vital functions, is called ora. Those who have the large designs of which they are so proud pricked in their skin suffer from attacks of fever which last several days, and this tattooing causes copious suppuration and thick scabs which are slow to detach themselves. Nervous and delicate areas, like the corner of the eye, the eyelids, and the tissues adjacent to the parotid glands, can never be tattooed without danger and dreadful pain. The New Zealand warriors therefore undergo this operation only a little at a time and several times a year, and they look on it as a trial of courage and endurance, while they despise as effeminate those men who do not dare to submit to it. 176

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During the sojourn of the corvette La Coquille at the Bay of Islands we observed a case similar to that reported in most works on medicine, relating to a young girl whom a large number of volunteers were unable to deflower. For three days a young New Zealand girl on board the ship withstood the successive efforts of all the crew members without any of them being able to capture that prize which they all felt in honour bound to conquer. The vagina was blocked by a thick, cartilaginous membrane, pierced by an almost imperceptible opening.

A malady whose ravages have not as yet been halted is the syphilis introduced by Cook in 1769 and 1770. 177 As a protection from its attacks the natives strenuously oppose the too easy contact of their women with European ships, while they force into prostitution the girls captured from neighbouring tribes as a result of the misfortunes of war, without concerning themselves with the painful effects which often remain as a souvenir of their obedience. Their pride and religious principles do not permit them to cohabit with these slaves. This malady is constantly renewed by contact with Port Jackson, whence it is directly imported.