1859 - Thomson, A. S. The Story of New Zealand [Vol.I] - Part II. History of the Discovery of New Zealand by Europeans - CHAPTER I. FROM DISCOVERY OF NEW ZEALAND UNTIL 1810.

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CHAPTER I.

FROM DISCOVERY OF NEW ZEALAND UNTIL 1810.

HAVING described the history and customs of the New Zealanders, we now proceed to relate in what manner, and at what time, they appeared on the stage of the civilised world.

Three European nations claim for their navigators the honour of discovering New Zealand. Frenchmen assert that Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, of Harfleur in Normandy, visited the country in 1504. 1 He sailed from Havre in 1503, and reached a country supposed to be New Zealand where he remained six months, at anchor in a river about the size of the Orne near Caen. De Gonneville brought a native of the country to France,

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who married one of his relatives; and this man's grandson wrote an account of De Gonneville's voyage, as the navigator's papers were destroyed by an English cruiser. F. P. D. C. tried unsuccessfully to fulfil the promise of De Gonneville to visit the country of his ancestors for the purpose of christianising them. The manners and customs of the islanders where De Gonneville anchored, according to the description given, correspond wonderfully with the habits of the New Zealanders.

Spaniards claim for Juan Fernandez the credit of the discovery, because that navigator states that he left the west coast of South America in 1576, and after sailing for about a month towards the south-west, reached a fertile and pleasant land inhabited by brown men clad in woven cloth garments. This country is supposed to have been New Zealand; an improbable conjecture, seeing that 7000 miles separate that portion of South America from New Zealand, and no sailing vessel in modern times, far less three centuries ago, ever completed such a voyage in thirty days. Quiros was ninety-two days from Callao to Pitcairn's Island, a distance of 4000 miles; and the United States Exploring Expedition of 1839 was thirty days between Callao and the island of Clermont de Tonnere, a distance of 3000 miles.

As an indirect support of Fernandez's claim, it is asserted that after Magellan's discovery of a western passage to India, Spanish ships touched at New Zealand, during their voyages between Manilla and South America, and introduced dogs and pigs into the country. In proof of this it is said, in the New Zealand language, that these animals, as well as ships, have Spanish names. For example: --

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Had the inquiry been extended, many other words of apparent Spanish origin might have been found in the language. Thus: --

Such verbal resemblances come, however, from a widely different source; they are remnants of the Sanscrit language, from which the Celtic, Gothic, and Sclavonic, like the Polynesian, originally sprang; and from which a few words have floated for ages unchanged in he New Zealand tongue, as well as in the Celtic, Gothic, and Sclavonic.

Had the Spaniards frequented these coasts, traces of their presence would have been still discovered in other things than words; but I have looked among the natives in various parts of the country for better evidence of intercourse than that just given, -- some vestiges which the followers of Mendana and Quiros might have left behind; but no foot-prints are to be found.

The honour of discovering New Zealand is, therefore, justly bestowed on Tasman. This Dutch navigator left Batavia with two ships, and on the 18th September, 1642, anchored in a bay in the Middle Island of New Zealand, next to that in which the beautiful English

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settlement of Nelson now stands. Two canoes paddled towards the ships, and a native in one of them blew an instrument which sounded like a Moorish trumpet. Next day a canoe with thirteen men on board approached within a stone's throw of one vessel; but neither food, clothing, nor curiosities could tempt any of them to venture on board: immediately, however, on reaching the shore seven other canoes came off, and several New Zealanders, with fear depicted on their faces, climbed on board the Heemskirk. Tasman, dreading danger, sent a boat with seven men to warn the crew of the Heemskirk to be on their guard. The moment the natives saw this boat in the water they shouted and signalled with their paddles to those at a distance, and several canoes rushed against the boat, and killed three men and mortally wounded a fourth. A precipitate retreat was then made by the natives, who carried off one of the slain.

Tasman, having now no hope of getting refreshment at this place, hoisted in the ships' anchors, and cursed the spot by calling it Massacre Bay. When his ships were under sail, twenty-two canoes put off from the shore; one man in the foremost canoe bore what Tasman thought-was a flag of truce, but which we now know was an ornamented spear. A broadside was discharged at the fleet; one shot struck down the man with the white flag, and other shots splashed the water around the canoes. Thunderstruck at this to them awful phenomenon, the natives hastily paddled their canoes to the shore; and thus ended Tasman's first and last intercourse with the aborigines of the land he discovered.

From the Middle Island Tasman sailed along the

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west coast, rounded the North Cape, and named it Maria van Diemen; sighted islands he called the Three Kings, and made preparations to land on one of them. But as the ships approached, Tasman was terrified at beholding "thirty-five natives of very large size, taking prodigious long strides, with clubs in their hands." This sight was enough for his alarmed imagination, and without landing he steered his ships away to the island of Cocos for refreshment. 2

On arriving in Europe Tasman named the land where four of his crew were slain New Zealand; and geographers were then of opinion that it was a portion of the great southern continent. Tasman described the aborigines as a blood-thirsty race, and stated that they commenced hostilities without provocation. He, however, who weighs Tasman's history for the sake of truth, must not forget that only one side of the narrative has come down to us. 3

Fire-arms were unknown to the New Zealanders at Tasman's era.

Maori tradition states that a European vessel, commanded by a man called Rongotute, visited the southern part of the North Island of New Zealand about the year 1740, and that from some cause the natives killed the crew and plundered the vessel.

Upwards of a century had rolled away after Tasman's

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visit, before a literary navigator touched at the island; when in the year 1769 Cook rendered his name famous in the annals of New Zealand as the first European who landed upon its shores. This was done during his voyage in the Southern hemisphere to observe the transit of Venus over the sun. Four generations of New Zealanders had lived and died since Tasman's era, and no tradition commemorated that event. Turanga, an inlet on the east coast of the North Island, in the province of Auckland, is still celebrated as the spot where Cook first landed; and from this fertile district, unjustly denominated by him Poverty Bay, he took his departure for Tolago Bay, the Houraki Gulf, the River Thames, and the Bay of Islands. He then sailed round Cape Maria van Diemen, coasted along the western shores of the North Island, and sighted and named the picturesque snow-capped mountain at the base of which the English settlement of Taranaki now stands, Mount Egmont. He then touched at Queen Charlotte's Sound, Hawke's Bay, and Cape Palliser; and discovered the passage between the two large islands which now bears his illustrious name.

During these explorations Cook had much intercourse with the natives, both on shore and on shipboard. Sometimes they were honest and friendly, at other times hostile and thievish. Men will pardon the New Zealanders these failings, when they reflect on the provocation and temptations they had to dishonesty and violence. Fire-arms were then unknown among the natives. Captain Cook on several occasions unjustly suspected them of evil, while they almost invariably reposed confidence in him. Without measuring the past by the present standard, the savage New Zea-

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landers on several occasions acted like civilised men, and the Christians like savages. For example, Captain Cook left the country without having had one of his crew killed or wounded by the natives; while they had to mourn the loss of ten men killed, and many others wounded, by the English during this visit.

Cook's mode of action and the New Zealanders' style of reasoning are strikingly developed in the following melancholy event. The English part of the story is found in Dr. Hawkesworth's "Narrative of Cook's Voyages;" the native part was furnished by Te Taniwha, a contemporary of Cook's, who died in 1853: --Lieut. Gore fired from the ship's deck at a New Zealander in a canoe, who had defrauded him of a piece of calico. In the excitement of paddling to escape, the injury done by the musket was not noticed by the natives in the canoe, although detected by Mr. Gore from the ship's deck, as Maru-tu-ahu, the man shot, scarcely altered his position. When the canoe reached the shore, the natives found their comrade sitting dead on the stolen calico, which was stained with his life's blood, the ball having entered his back. Several chiefs investigated into the affair, and declared Maru-tu-ahu deserved his fate; that he stole, and was killed for so doing; and that his life-blood should not be revenged on the strangers. Seeing, however, Maru-tu-ahu paid for the calico with his life, it was not taken away from him, but was wrapped round his body as a winding-sheet. Singular to relate, Captain Cook landed soon after the murder, and traded as if nothing had occurred. Would Cook's ship's crew have acted thus if one of them had been so slain?

Important results were obtained for England, science,

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and New Zealand by this memorable visit. Possession was taken of the country for King George the Third, the transit of the planet Mercury over the sun was observed in Mercury Bay, Cook's Strait was discovered, the geographical fallacy that New Zealand was a portion of a continent was entirely dispelled, and the natives received several valuable additions to their food, and acquired much civilising information.

De Surville was the next navigator who visited New Zealand. When Cook's ship, the Endeavour, was working out of Doubtless Bay in the North Island, De Surville's vessel, the St. Jean Baptiste, from India, was sailing in, and neither navigator was aware of the other's vicinity.

What led to this Frenchman's visit was a rumour, widely circulated and universally believed, that the English had discovered an island of gold in the Southern Ocean. De Surville anchored his ship in Doubtless Bay in December 1769, and immediately landed at Mongonui, where he was received by crowds of natives, who were delighted and surprised at the confidence reposed in them, and in return they supplied the strangers with food and water. One day a storm arose as a party of invalids were endeavouring to reach the ship from the shore. Being driven back, the sick were detained by the inclemency of the weather for two days in the house of a chief named Naginoui, and by his people they were fed and carefully attended without remuneration. When the storm subsided, one of the ship's boats was missing, and De Surville, without any evidence for so doing, believed that the New Zealanders had stolen it. Under the guise of friendship, he invited Naginoui on board, accused him of the theft, and put him in irons. Not

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satisfied with this treacherous revenge, he burned the village where his sick had found an asylum in the hour of need, and carried the chief away a prisoner from his native land.

Naginoui did not survive his capture long; he pined for fern root, wept that he would never again behold his children, and died of a broken heart eighty days after his seizure.

Men's evil deeds are occasionally punished in this world, and so were De Surville's, for eleven days after Naginoui's death he was drowned in the surf when landing at Callao in Peru. 4

Among all nations crime begets crime, and retaliation, not forgiveness, is the ruling principle in the human breast. Three years after Naginoui's capture, and not far from the scene of it, Marion du Fresne landed in New Zealand. It was on the 11th of May, 1772, this unfortunate man anchored his two ships between Te Wai-iti Whais Island and the Motu Arohia (the Motu-aro of navigators), in the Bay of Islands. The former island is small, and Taranui was the chief of the village which stood upon it; the latter island had then a considerable population, but is now uninhabited: next day the sick were landed on Te Wai-iti, not on Motu Arohia, as stated by Crozet. The New Zealanders brought the ship's crews abundance of fish, and the French in return loaded them with presents. Intimacy, friendship, and confidence rapidly sprung up; the French often slept on shore, and the natives on shipboard. Marion, whose authority over all was soon perceived, was the object of universal attention, and he placed in the aborigines

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such unbounded confidence, that on several occasions, Crozet, the second in command of the expedition, took the liberty of pointing out to him the imprudence of his conduct.

In this happy state, Marion and his crew passed away their lives at the Bay of Islands, until the 8th of June. On that day Marion landed, and after the natives had decorated his head with four long white feathers, he returned to the ship, more delighted than ever with his new friends. But it was then remarked that the natives had ceased to visit the ships, and one girl on leaving gave signs of sorrow which none could explain.

On the 12th of June, Marion went on shore at the request of a friendly chief, with sixteen officers and men, to enjoy a day's fishing in Manawaoroa Bay, a place still celebrated among the British soldiers stationed at the Bay of Islands as capital fishing ground. When evening came, it caused some surprise on board the ships' that Marion did not return, although no evil was suspected. Early next morning the boat of the ship Marquis de Castries, with twelve men, was sent for food and water to Orokawa. Four hours after its departure, one of the sailors from this boat swam off to the vessel almost dead with terror, and related that the boats' crew on landing were received by the natives in the usual friendly manner, but while dispersed collecting fire-wood, each man was suddenly attacked by six New Zealanders, and all were killed save himself. From a concealed thicket he beheld his comrades' bodies cut into pieces, and divided among their murderers, who immediately left the spot with the flesh.

Great anxiety was now felt for Marion and all on shore, and the Mascarin's long boat was immediately

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launched with a strongly-armed crew. As it approached the land, Marion's boat was seen surrounded by natives, near the bottom of Manawaoroa Bay. It was not thought advisable to inquire for Marion, but to go and warn Crozet, who with sixty men were felling a kauri tree two miles inland. Crozet, on hearing what had happened, ordered the men to collect their tools, and march to the beach. Part of the cut-down tree and the road made to drag it along still remain, and was pointed out to me as the "road of Marion." Crozet did not communicate to his party the bloody transactions which had occurred, lest they might endanger their safety by an unseasonable revenge.

During the progress of Crozet's party to the beach, they were met and followed by crowds of natives, who shouted that Tacouri had killed and eaten Marion. On reaching the strand, Crozet seized a musket, drew a line on the sand, and cried that he would shoot the first native who crossed it. This bold bearing enabled his party to embark safely in the boats, and then came the hour for vengeance. Volley after volley of musketry was fired among the solid body of New Zealanders on the beach, who, stupified by terror, stood like sheep to be slaughtered. That night the sick were embarked on board the ships, and next day a party, sent for wood and water, destroyed the village on Motu Arohia, and killed many of the inhabitants. Some days afterwards several natives were seen dressed in the murdered sailors' clothes, and were shot. A party sent to ascertain Marion's fate, found Tacouri's village deserted, and saw that chief decamp covered with Marion's mantle. In one house several pieces of human flesh were seen in baskets; after setting this and another village on fire, the ships weighed

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anchor, and stood out of the Bay of Islands, which they named the Bay of Treachery.

Crozet in his narrative repeatedly states that the French gave no cause of offence, that up to the fatal day nothing could exceed the apparent harmony in which both races lived; "they treated us," says Crozet, "with every show of friendship for thirty-three days, with the intention of eating us on the thirty-fourth."

Such is the French account of Marion's massacre; the native version of the affair I accidentally heard on a singular occasion. During the winter quarter of 1851, the French corvette L'Alcmene, thirty-two guns, Commander Count D'Harcourt, was totally wrecked, and ten lives lost on the west coast of New Zealand, the opposite side of the island, but only fifty miles distant from the place of Marion's massacre. As several men were severely wounded when the ship foundered, the Governor requested me to go and assist their transit across the country to Auckland. When so employed, I awoke one night, and saw a crowd of New Zealanders talking earnestly round a fire. There were then upwards of a hundred French sailors, and nearly two hundred natives, plunged in sleep in the open air all about. Hearing the name of Marion mentioned, I pretended sleep, and listened to the conversation. From many words, I gathered that long ago two vessels commanded by Marion, belonging to the same nation as the shipwrecked sailors, visited the Bay of Islands, and that a strong friendship sprang up between both races; and that they planted the garlic which flavours the milk, butter, and flesh of cows fed in that district. Before the Wewis, as the French are now called, departed, they violated sacred places, cooked food with

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tapued wood, and put two chiefs in irons; that, in revenge, their ancestors killed Marion and several of his crew, and in the same spirit the French burned villages and shot many New Zealanders.

From inquiries made on the spot in 1853, the above narrative and the reason assigned for Marion's murder are, I believe, correct. No man was then alive at the Bay of Islands who had witnessed the affair, and only two old men were acquainted with the particulars of it, although his name was familiar to all. According to the native story, the French, not they, were the aggressors. "We treated Marion's party," the New Zealanders may say, "with every kindness for thirty days; and on the thirty-first they put two of our chiefs in irons, and burned our sacred places."

Civilised men who judge savage races by civil laws, may deem the native cause assigned for Marion's massacre frivolous; but those acquainted with the ancient customs of the New Zealanders must admit that violating sacred places and enslaving sacred chiefs are ample provocations for strife. The circumstance related of the natives having ceased visiting the ships before Marion's massacre, was a sure indication of hostility. It also affords an indirect proof that the whole tale is not told, and that Crozet's narrative is garbled.

Put the affair in this light. Suppose a French vessel visited Japan, that the Japanese treated the crew with kindness, and that after a month's residence the French commenced collecting wood for the prosecution of the voyage, and to save trouble carried off decayed but sacred monuments for fire-wood -- would the Japanese allow their religion to be insulted by strangers they had treated as friends? The wood of every deserted

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New Zealand dwelling is sacred; to cook food with a portion of it was in the eyes of the Natives, in Marion's day, a greater sacrilege than the destruction of a piece of the true Cross was in the days of the Crusaders. If they did not revenge insults on their sacred places, their gods, they believed, would shower down evil upon them in this world. It was a dread of vengeance from the gods which caused Marion's massacre in New Zealand, and Captain Cook's death in the Sandwich Islands.

Slaughtering the Huguenots in Paris in 1572, and the Highlanders in Glencoe in 1692, were treacherous deeds; the massacre of the French in the Bay of Islands in 1772 resulted from superstition.

Historians have omitted to record the visit of another French vessel to New Zealand about this period; but natives living near the spot have not forgotten the event, and the tradition runs thus: -- Shortly after Cook's departure from the Houraki Gulf, a vessel entered the river Thames, and shipped a number of wooden spars. When sailing away, she fell in with a fishing-canoe which had been driven out to sea, took the two young natives in it on board, and conveyed them to France. They were brought back in two years; and the commander of the vessel gave the natives pigs and potatoes, with instructions how to preserve the former and cultivate the latter. 5 While the names of these good men are forgotten by the New Zealanders, those of Cook, De Surville, and Marion live in their traditions.

Cook, when searching for a southern continent in 1774, again visited New Zealand, and spent several months at Dusky Bay and Queen Charlotte's Sound. On

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this occasion he placed confidence in the natives, and landed with trifling presents in place of fire-arms; the consequence was that the natives were more friendly in their manner, and more honest in their dealings.

Unhappily this second visit, like the former, was disgraced by bloodshed: --A boat was sent by the commander of the Adventure, with nine men, to gather wild greens in Queen Charlotte's Sound. When on shore, a New Zealander offered to sell a stone hatchet to a sailor, who, after examining it, would neither return it nor give payment for it; whereupon the native snatched a quantity of bread and fish from where the sailors were eating. This was resisted; a quarrel ensued, and two natives were shot; but before the marines could reload their muskets the whole boat's crew were slaughtered.

As Cook admitted the accuracy of the above narrative, it is evident that the English were the first to act dishonestly, and the first to commit murder. Mr. Burney, afterwards the historian of the discoveries in the south seas, was sent by Captain Furneaux from the ship to ascertain what detained the boat, and in revenge shot many more natives than there were sailors slain, and destroyed several valuable canoes. Before returning to the ship Mr. Burney saw sufficient to convince him that the bodies of the men composing the boat's crew had been eaten.

Captain Cook's last visit was made in 1777, when searching for a passage from the Pacific into the Atlantic Ocean: on this occasion he spent thirteen days in Queen Charlotte's Sound, and his advent struck terror into the hearts of the natives in that neighbourhood, from the idea that he had returned to take another revenge for the Adventure's boat's crew. Kindness entirely dissi-

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pated alarm, and two natives embarked with him for the purpose of visiting England. These men, contemplating from the deck their receding native land, became overwhelmed with grief, and when the ship arrived at the Society Islands they begged to be landed. Here the aborigines who understood their language received them as friends, but neither ever again saw New Zealand, both dying a few years afterwards.

Five times had Cook now visited New Zealand, and at each visit introduced several useful plants and animals; several of both died, but pigs, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and fowls survived and multiplied in the land.

The social state of New Zealand in 1780 resembled that of Britain when first invaded by the Romans. Perpetual warfare was the lot of all; yet the civilisation of the natives at this era was superior to that of the Britons when first known to the Tyrian mariners; and, with the exception of cannibalism, their condition will bear comparison with that of the Scotch Highlanders in 1700. 6

Dr. Forster, the companion of Cook, estimated the population in 1770 at one hundred thousand, and no other data have been furnished from which an inference can be drawn that the people were more numerous. The Bay of Plenty, the East Coast, and the Bay of Islands were then as now the most populous districts. In Cook's Straits the population was scanty; four hundred were the estimated number of natives in Queen Charlotte's Sound, a few huts stood in Admiralty Bay, and the Middle Island was almost uninhabited.

Captain Cook was informed of conflicts between tribes during his first and second visits, and New Zealanders

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taken on board at Poverty Bay were terrified at the prospect of being landed a few miles up the coast, because it was their enemies' country. Villages slandered their neighbours, and requested Cook's assistance to destroy them; and the navigator states that, had he acted on the advice of all his pretended friends, he would have extirpated the whole race. In 1780 the New Zealanders were destitute of money, the universal incitement to human industry, and of iron its most powerful instrument.

Crozet and Cook made New Zealand known all over Europe; and men of the highest and lowest intellects read their narratives with intense interest. The existence of an undoubted race of cannibals furnished seasoned food for vulgar minds, while the intelligence of the New Zealanders, their anxiety for iron nails and fish-hooks, and their contempt for beads and baubles, attracted the attention of the learned and philanthropic. Dr. Franklin, then in the zenith of his fame, proposed that a ship should be filled with various useful articles, and sent to trade with them; a proposition indicative of the accurate judgment the philosopher had formed of the character of the people. 7

New Zealand was at this time likewise proposed in the House of Commons as an eligible field for convicts; but the cannibal propensities of the aborigines overpowered every argument in favour of the scheme. The islands were, however, included in the royal commission of 1787 as a part of the British dominions, in virtue of the sovereignty established by Cook.

It is difficult to convey an idea of the terror in which the New Zealanders were held about this period.

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Sailors groaning under scurvy, and in sight of a country covered with vegetables, the specific for that dire disease, preferred toothless gums to contact with cannibals. As the deer dreads the tiger, so do all men dread the eaters of men; and this is apparently a law of nature, for even the conquerors of Peru, men not to be daunted by trifles, fled to their ships at the sight of roasted human flesh. In 1791, Captain Vancouver anchored at Dusky Bay, in the Middle Island, on his voyage round the world; but no vessel entered any of the northern harbours during that year; and an idea of the dread in which the natives were held even by educated travellers may be drawn from the following incident. Admiral D'Entrecasteaux, when searching for La Perouse, arrived off New Zealand in 1793. His naturalist represented the importance of obtaining several flax plants, but the admiral refused, out of terror, to approach too near to the coast, although the natives were friendly, and paddled in their canoes to the ship to barter mats and weapons of war for iron and fish-hooks.

Terror of cannibalism, that barrier to intercourse, was ultimately overcome, and New Zealand and the civilised world were drawn together towards the end of the eighteenth century by the extension of the South-Sea whale fishery to the New Zealand coasts, the establishment in 1788 of a penal settlement in Australia, the formation of a colony in Norfolk Island in 1789, and the anxiety of commercial men to obtain New Zealand flax.

It was the silk-like softness of the New Zealand flax mats which made the manufacturers so anxious to procure the plant producing this fabric; and navigators were then under the impression that none of the plants

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hitherto obtained was the right variety. When, however, Norfolk Island was colonised, the settlers were surprised and gratified to find it grew there in wild luxuriance; but they failed in fashioning cloth out of its coarse fibre like that manufactured by the New Zealanders. Mortified to find that savages surpassed them in ingenuity, they were nevertheless anxious to get one to instruct them in the mystery of mat-making; and there being no fair way of procuring such a person, the Government fell upon a foul one.

In 1793 a vessel was sent to cruise about the New Zealand coast with the avowed purpose of kidnapping one of the aborigines. When it arrived off the Bay of Islands, two men were enticed on board, and the captain immediately trimmed the ship's sails away for Norfolk Island. Unluckily one of the captives was a chief and the other a priest, and neither would admit they knew anything about dressing flax; -- an occupation which they contemptuously termed woman's work. After a six months' detention at Norfolk Island, these men were conveyed to their native land by the governor, Captain King, where they were received with joy and astonishment. To their assembled tribe they related their story, and stated that they had come in three days from the island where they were living. This last announcement being discredited, one of them ran and brought from the ship's poop a fresh cabbage, an evidence alike productive of surprise and conviction.

Captain King recompensed them for their unjust capture and imprisonment by giving them several useful plants, with ten young sows and two boars: to him the New Zealanders are also indebted for maize, as the seeds of this productive corn left by Cook had perished. The

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kindness the natives received at Norfolk Island was never forgotten by them, and in the fulness of their hearts they spread abroad curious accounts of the manners and customs of the English. Captain King described the New Zealanders as a people between whom and the English a good understanding might be easily cultivated; 8 and in 1819 "Good Governor King" was still remembered in the Bay of Islands. 9

After this event several whale-ships hovering round the coasts anchored in different parts for refreshment, and their crews traded with cautious friendship among the natives. It was then ascertained that the coasts abounded in seals, and that numerous whales annually visited Cook's Strait and other inlets during the winter season, for the purpose of bringing forth their young. Queen Charlotte's Sound, Dusky Bay, Banks's Peninsula, Cook's Strait, Poverty and Hawke's Bays, the Bay of Plenty, and the Bay of Islands, were the chief places resorted to by whalers. The scanty population of the Middle Island received the whalers with open arms, the aborigines in the north with suspicion. Several, from a love of novelty, visited New South Wales, and others shipped themselves on board whalers 10 A few European sailors, fascinated by the dark restless-eyed women, and a love of freedom, left their ships and took up their abode among the natives.

One of the first of this afterwards important class of settlers was George Bruce. This sailor lad had bestowed kind attention on a sick chief named Te Pahi during: his trip from Sydney to the Bay of Islands, in the year 1804, and was begged by him to stop in the country.

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Fascinated with the offer of Te Pahi's youngest daughter, and a large piece of land, Bruce left his ship and settled at the Bay of Islands. To gain his wife's affections, a girl whose pleasing beauty is still remembered by some old men, Bruce submitted to be tattooed; his gentle manners and usefulness as an interpreter between the whalers and the natives, caused the tribe to respect and value him. One unfortunate day the General Wellesley, an English vessel, arrived off the coast, and Captain Dalrymple begged Bruce and his wife to come on board to assist him in searching for gold near the North Cape. Distrusting Dalrymple's simple word, Bruce extracted a solemn promise that both would be safely landed at the place where they had embarked.

Disappointed at not finding gold, Captain Dalrymple broke his promise and carried Bruce and his wife away from New Zealand. At Malacca Dalrymple left Bruce on shore, carrying off his wife to Penang, where he sold her to the master of another ship. Here Bruce, who followed in pursuit, found her, and with the governor's aid got her back, and a passage for both to Calcutta, in the hope of meeting there with a vessel bound for Sydney. 11 But neither Bruce nor his wife ever returned to the Bay of Islands. Rewa, a chief who gave me this information, was much surprised at my inquiring about an event and a man long forgotten; and he told me Te Pahi died under the impression that Bruce carried away his favourite daughter by force. Two natives, contemporaries of Bruce, who had listened to this conversation were much excited on hearing from me the true cause why their early friend had never returned, his melancholy history and unknown end.

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Civilised manners and customs produced strange impressions on the minds of Te Pahi and other travelled New Zealanders. The operation of shaving transfixed them with wonder; the reflection of their faces in a mirror filled them with delight: but the ease with which ropes were made at the Sydney rope-walk gave them the most durable satisfaction. These travellers soon ascertained that Sydney was nothing to London, and a desire to visit England seized upon several.

In 1805, Mr. Savage, an English surgeon, took the first New Zealander to Great Britain. His name was Mohanger, and he was introduced to the civilised world as a chief, although in reality a slave. What principally attracted his attention in London was the size of St. Paul's, London Bridge, the number of ships, how the London people were fed, the mode in which houses were supplied with water by means of pipes, and that George III. was an old man, and not a vigorous warrior. 12 Mohanger returned to his native land laden with carpenter's tools, and afterwards lamented that he had not asked for fire-arms in place of them.

Matara, a son of Te Pahi, visited England in 1807, and like Mohanger was introduced to the royal family. During Matara's residence in London, he contracted a cold which terminated in consumption, of which disease he died shortly after his return.

Ruatara was, however, the most intelligent traveller of this era. In 1805, when a mere lad, he shipped on board a whaler, and after many adventures reached London in 1809. He returned to Australia with the Rev. Mr. Marsden, and resided a year with that gentleman learning agriculture. From Sydney he proceeded

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to New Zealand, which he reached after a long detention at Norfolk Island. In 1814, Ruatara again visited Sydney accompanied by Hongi, returned with Mr. Marsden and the missionaries to New Zealand, and died suddenly a few days afterwards. Ruatara was the first native who cultivated wheat, and was very instrumental in introducing Christianity and letters among his countrymen. 13

Travelled New Zealanders spread and magnified England's power and greatness among their countrymen, and the people soon became aware of the advantage of keeping on friendly terms with Englishmen.

Meanwhile the people at large were advancing in civilisation, and in 1808 they were living more peaceably than they were in 1780. Trade and the industry commerce brings in her train were now producing a visible effect among them. Several Europeans had taken up their abode in the Middle Island, and whale ships annually resorted to the North Island for the purpose of exchanging blankets, axes, fish-hooks and other articles, for pigs, potatoes, spars, and flax. Neither tobacco smoking, nor much anxiety to possess fire-arms, had yet arisen among them. The desire for such articles was the result of a more advanced civilisation. Wherever New Zealanders travelled they produced favourable impressions on the minds of civilised men. Those shipped on board whale ships were often selected as harpooners, from their contempt of the dangers of the sea, and stories of their deeds are still related by old settlers, and on the forecastle of South-sea whalers. Here is a specimen of these tales:--

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One morning a lone whale was seen on the placid Pacific; the boat was pulled up to it, and the New Zealander, balancing himself on the gunwale, darted the harpoon at the fish and missed. After several hours chase under a tropical sun, the whale was approached a second time, and the New Zealander darted two harpoons at him but again missed. Then the bitterest disappointment arose among the tired boat's crew, which they expressed in curses deep and loud. These taunts maddened the Maori; and no sooner was the boat again pulled up to the whale, than he bounded on the animal's back, and for one dizzy second was seen there. The next, all was foam and fury, and both were out of sight. The men in the boat shoved off, flung over line as fast as they could, while ahead nothing was seen but a red whirlpool of blood and brine. Presently a dark object swam out, the line began to straighten, then smoke round the logger-head, and the boat sped like an arrow through the water. They were fast, and the whale was running. But where was the New Zealander? His brown hand was on the boat's gunwale, and he was hauled aboard in the very midst of the mad bubbles that burst under the bows. 14

This growing confidence between Europeans and New Zealanders was interrupted by the massacre of the crew and passengers of the ship Boyd, in the year 1809. This vessel started from Sydney for England, with the intention of touching at Wangaroa for spars. She carried seventy Europeans and five New Zealanders, who were shipped to work their passages to their own country. Tarra, or George, one of the New Zealanders, was the son of a Wangaroa chief. During the voyage

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George refused to work, because he was sick, for which conduct the captain stopped his food, and twice flogged him at the gangway with much severity. When the vessel arrived at Wangaroa, George exhibited his scarified back to his father's tribe, and they unanimously resolved to revenge the starvation and stripes their chief's son had suffered.

This was accomplished by treachery. The captain and a considerable number of the crew were allured on shore, murdered, and eaten; and all left on board, save one woman, two children, and a cabin boy, shared a similar fate. The lad was saved by George, in gratitude for a trifling kindness, and the woman and children preserved themselves by concealment. These Europeans were rescued from the natives by Te Pahi and Mr. Berrey, the supercargo of a ship then at the Bay of Islands. 15

Scenes occurred at this massacre painful to think upon. Sailors who rarely used God's name, unless to swear by, fled in terror to George, and prostrating themselves before him, cried, "My God! My God! save me!" These humiliating supplications were, however, disregarded by the savage, who struck the petitioners dead one by one with his own arm.

It is impossible to offer a single word in mitigation of such butchery, although Mr. Nicholas, who visited Wangaroa in 1814, reported that the New Zealanders had received strong provocation for the massacre; 16 and it is a New Zealand law, that injury to one man of a tribe shall be resented by all. Major Cruise, who landed at Wangaroa in 1820, states George was then

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detested by his own people; his hatred to Europeans, like the stripes on his back, was never eradicated, and on his deathbed he urged his tribe to drive the Wesleyan missionaries away from Wangaroa.

Events of the gravest nature are soon forgotten in new colonies, but the massacre of the Boyd is still spoken of with horror by the Wangaroa settlers. Part of the ship is occasionally seen in the harbour at ebb tides, and strangers are told that within the sunken hull there are several boxes of silver and gold.

It was scarcely to be expected that such a massacre would pass without revenge, but unhappily the blow fell on the innocent, not the guilty; and it came on Te Pahi's people, who had taken no part in the massacre. It is true Te Pahi went from the Bay of Islands to Wangaroa on hearing of the affair, and, although indirectly instrumental in saving several lives, he nevertheless ate the flesh of the murdered English.

The revenge was managed thus. Five whaling ships met in the outer harbour at the Bay of Islands soon after the massacre. Here their crews, maddened by reading an account of it, and confident in their numbers, were falsely told that Te Pahi was the sole instigator of the bloody transaction. This chief had a village on an island in the Bay, very accessible and without any stockade, where he and his people were then living in the security of peaceful innocence. Secretly the whalers fell upon Te Pahi's village, killed young and old, sick and healthy, males and females, to the number of thirty, and then burned whatever stood or grew on the soil. Te Pahi escaped severely wounded, and was slain soon afterwards in a conflict with the Wangaroa tribes which

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originated in his having attempted to save some of the crew of the Boyd.

Misfortune was Te Pahi's lot from the day he became acquainted with the English. His youngest daughter was stolen away from him by Europeans; his favourite son died from a disease contracted in England; his generous attempt to save life connected his name with an affair which brought extinction upon his tribe, partly from his own race and partly from the English, the heaviest blow coming from the European side, a quarter from which he least expected or deserved such a reward.