Handbook for Emigrants and Others

John Bright

First published by Henry Hooper in 1841

Digitised and made available online by Auckland Libraries and the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Epub © 2013 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927279-34-2

[TITLE PAGES]

HAND-BOOK FOR EMIGRANTS,
AND OTHERS

,

BEING A HISTORY OF
NEW ZEALAND,
ITS STATE AND PROSPECTS,
PREVIOUS AND SUBSEQUENT TO THE PROCLAMATION OF HER MAJESTY'S AUTHORITY;
ALSO
REMARKS ON THE CLIMATE AND COLONIES OF THE
AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT.

BY
JOHN BRIGHT , M.R.C.S.
RESIDENT FOR FOUR YEARS IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

"Haud ignara mali misecis succurrere disco."

LONDON:
HENRY HOOPER, 13, PALL MALL EAST.
1841.

[Digitised and made available online by Auckland Libraries and the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.]

Terrestrial paradises are not for embodied souls; from the attributed defects of this world spring attractions to its Ruler; therefore would I have you to weigh well every consideration.

PALMER and CLAYTON, 30, Crane Court, Fleet Street.

[CONTENTS]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The Country.............................. 1

CHAPTER II. The Climate and Soil.................... 21

CHAPTER III. Productions of the Soil. ................. 41

CHAPTER IV. Animals, etc.............................. 62

CHAPTER V. The Native................................ 76

CHAPTER VI. European Residents..................... 110

CHAPTER VII. Colonial Schemes........................ 145

CHAPTER VIII. Colonial Policy.......................... 179

CHAPTER IX. For the Emigrant....................... 199

ADDENDA................................ 210

CHAPTER I. – THE COUNTRY.

INFORMATION FOR EMIGRANTS

TO

THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

NEW ZEALAND.

CHAPTER I. – THE COUNTRY.

IN the Autumn of 1839, the climate of South Australia forced me to set sail in quest of a change. Report attracted me to New Zealand, where I landed in the beginning of September, five months previous to the arrival of his Excellency the Governor, Captain Hobson, R.N. Recently returned to England, my attention has been directed to the numerous advertisements exciting the emigrant to repair thither. As numbers are already there, and strong influences are exerted to induce more to follow, I desire to impart my quantum of information, without using colours merely to draw attention; nor am I led by any interest whatever to bias decisions.

I have presumed the account of any one who has sojourned there, would be esteemed otherwise than

an idle tale, and would be perused as likely to impart some beneficial information; as many are on the eve of embarkation, time will not permit my being so careful with my pen as I could have wished, fearing, lest I might have allowed those to depart, to whom I might have given warning of the many jack-o'-lanterns played about the paths of emigration.

I purpose to give a general, not minute, history of the country and its climate; of its soil, productions, and capabilities; also of its Aboriginal and European inhabitants; and to close my account with observations on what may obstruct or facilitate the progress of a colonist.

The geographical position of New Zealand 1 must be too well known to need an account from me; or that it consists of three islands – the northern, which is about nine hundred miles from its north to its south cape; the middle, or southern, which is the largest; and Stewart's Island, the smallest, and lying furthest to the southward: it is to the northern my narrative is chiefly confined. The acreage of these islands is computed as exceeding fifty millions of square acres.

Towards the northern extremity of the northern island, the settlement of the government has been formed. To the extreme south, on the northern border of Cook's Straits, the New Zealand's Company's first settlement was formed: the government

being commissioned by our Sovereign to treat with tbe natives, that her sovereignty might be established; and the Company chartered to buy and sell lands, and for general purposes of trade, under the government exercised by Her Majesty's representative.

The Governor landed in the Bay of Islands in the month of January 1840, at the township of Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, the eldest settlement in New Zealand. The aspect of the coast is either sandy ridges and flats, flanked by lofty brown looking hills thickly timbered, or by bold dark rocks. Its outline is every where deeply serrated by the influx of the ocean, and the numerous streams and rivers rushing from its hills to the sea.

The Bay of Islands is situate near the north end of the northern island. The Bay has a wide entrance, the heads being nine miles apart; the anchoring grounds are some miles from the heads, of which a rocky cape called Cape Bren forms one, and a pyramidal rock emerging abruptly from the sea, not inaptly termed the Nine-Pin, forms the other. This rock has not an inch of soil upon it; and it would require the steady foot of a practised climber to remain upon its summit, the post being utterly untenable in a gale of wind. Such, however, was the mania for land speculations among the Australian colonists anticipating colonization, that a resident, infected with that fever, perhaps dreaming of a lighthouse company and himself as managing director, actually purchased from the natives this lump of well-

washed stone, on which no bird could lay an egg in safety. The Nine-Pin is not connected with the main land; a small passage intervening. On entering the heads, you have on either side dark sombre-looking rocks. About three miles within the heads, a rocky island 2 stays the direction of your course; on one side of which you bring up, in the anchoring ground of Tip-poo-nah; on the other, you turn slightly, and are carried to the anchoring ground off Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, some miles distant from the heads; (before bringing up, you have passed several rocky islands, apparently only suited for the dwellings of birds, forming another safe anchorage, termed Par-o-a Bay;) or you may proceed still farther. Opposite Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, extending outwards from the mission village, is the Brampton Shoal; you pass rocky islands to the right and left, until the passage, after a distance of some miles, becomes narrowed; and beyond, a ship may not proceed if she would keep afloat. This is the seat of a government depot, and where a town was advertised to be raised – Russell Town. It is a complete, safe, and extensive harbour; the resort originally of whaling-vessels of England, France, and America, seeking fresh provisions for their crews; and, as Europeans settled, the resort of merchant-vessels from the Australian colonies. Nearly one hundred sail have often been riding together at anchor within this bay,

studding the face of the waters with hulls and spars; their different coloured streamers playing in the wind; and their boats sailing or rowing oyer their surface – a pleasing and a lively scene.

The surface of the island is mountainous to an excess: the circumscribed flat on which he lands, might daunt the hopes of the agriculturist; he cogitates if he himself can ascend the hills, how then are horses and ploughs to work?

It is an anxious moment when the new country is first hailed from sea; the heart is apt to beat or be depressed by the impression of that anxious gaze rivetted on its future home.

On landing, and travelling inland, you pass over short flats and long hills; traversing ridge after ridge, you notice the hills are often very precipitous, with occasional deep gorges; here and there you pause on an eminence whose top expands, presenting a tabular or slightly undulated surface. The valleys are quickly passed, being small in extent, and the waters of a river or stream, poured into their bosoms by surrounding hills; the available extent of the vales is often intruded on by marshes overgrown with tall segs. Sometimes these vales are like the bottom of a tub, of which the surrounding hills form the sides. There are very few plains in New Zealand; the broad top of a mountain or a confined vale, are called plains; yet plains there are, though very rare; for this reason the scenery is of slight extent, mostly a miniature of Wales; eminences too

frequently obstruct your view. A gentleman from New South Wales, having explored the country between the Bay of Islands and western coast, thus described to me his impression of it. "If I wanted to make a model of your promising island, I would empty a hogshead of sugar loaves, and set them on their bases close to each other; knock off their tops at various heights here and there, and that should form an unexceptionable model of New Zealand." The idea is not extravagant; it is close to nature.

You next reflect on the requirements of capital for the formation of roads 3 through such a country, and foresee that time must elapse before roads can be made – a great drawback to any country, however otherwise favoured. The settlements are on, or near the coast, and the communications by sea; being a narrow island towards its northern end, you are never, in any of the northern districts, far from the sea. The harbours are numerous: next to the Bay of Islands, you come to Wan-gar-o-a, a good harbour with a narrow mouth; then Doubtless Bay, a small but good anchorage; within which there is a rock near the middle of the entrance; on the west coast, Ho-ki-an-ga, a harbour not always easy of access; 4 Kai-pa-ra, having a difficult entrance; here the New

Zealand Land Company's barque Tory was nearly wrecked; Man-o-kow, a small harbour; Ka-fee-ah, and others of less note. Turning Cape Egmont into Cook's Straits, you come to Taranaki Bay and Port Nicholson, the most important there; the latter where the Company's first settlement (under the direction of Col. Wakefield) is placed. Turning Cape Palliser, you reach Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay, affording little shelter; and, on the east coast, after rounding the east cape into the Bay of Plenty, you have bar harbours for small craft at Opo-tee-kee and O-hee-wah, and the small and safe harbour of Tow-ron-ga. Next, Mercury Bay, which is not well sheltered: here her Majesty's ship Buffalo was wrecked last year. Turning Cape Colville, you enter, passing the Barriers islands, the Frith of the Thames; and some miles from the sea, at Coromondel, and also at the Wai-mattee, distant three hundred miles from the North Cape, are good harbours. At the Wai-mattee is the seat of government (the town of Auckland) fixed. This district or isthmus may be termed the waist of the island, the east and west coasts being but three miles apart; the natives frequently haul across their canoes, capable of containing fifty men or more, from one shore to the other; small harbours intervene between this and the Bay of Islands. The greater number of the harbours have bars at their mouths. The Bay of Islands and Port Nicholson are the largest and best to enter, and also for shelter.

The finest portions of country most gifted for the plough and the sickle, and the general operations of the farmer, is the Why-kat-to, communicating with the east coast at Tow-ron-ga; the north-east at the Thames; the west coast at Kai-pa-ra, and Man-o-kow. The Why-kat-to country is more open, having an undulated surface not so embarrassed with mountains; it is near the centre of the island: to such account the natives and Europeans, who have traversed it, subscribe. Erom this part, the finest and greatest abundance of native produce has been procured. I am acquainted with a person resident in New Zealand for years, who has sailed round and round the island, trading (his constant avocation); and who has lately, in 1840, removed his trader into that district on account of its advantages. From it, tracts of communication are trod to all parts of the island by the native; it is as capable, and more so, than most districts, of conversion into roads. Here, too, is the most inland native settlement; in numbers large, trading extensively, resolute in war, yet desirous to avoid it.

There are many other parts where an open and fertile country is to be met with; not however so abounding in advantages; nearing, as it does, a central position, and having extent. It is expected that a communication will be discovered between this country and Taranaki Bay. Eor agricultural pursuits, districts will be found about the Bay of Islands;

small patches of available land about Wangaroa – a splendid tract between that part and the shores of Doubtless Bay, which I pointed out in a letter to the Company's agents out there; a vale rich in vegetation, through which a small river, of varied depth, meanders; about Doubtless Bay, and approaching the North Cape: places of no extent about Ho-ke-an-ga, expanding in the neighbourhood of Ki-pa-ra. The borders of Cook's Straits are very mountainous; the line of coast presenting occasionally such a spot as is described in the engraving of Wellington, published by the New Zealand Land Company, picturing a bay; the land having a gentle rise to a high background of lofty hills, their range appearing to reach the sea on either side of the settlement, in form of an amphitheatre – a common coast scene in New Zealand. About Poverty Bay is a fine country; on rounding the East Cape, and emerging into the Bay of Plenty, you notice in its centre low sand-hills, behind which is a country twenty miles or more in extent; difficult, however, of approach, having no harbour for large vessels, and smaller craft, needing pilots, not always at hand. The Bay of Plenty is difficult to escape from, unless the anchor is weighed the instant the wind threatens from the north-east. In this wide spreading bay, between the east cape and its centre, twenty miles at sea, is an island incessantly vomiting forth a huge column of white or black smoke – (the vane of the country thereabouts). Its appearance has

named it the White Island; and on it are sulphur and pumice-stone. When resident in this neighbourhood, I experienced the shock of four earthquakes; they are common there throughout the year. I could not learn that they caused damage.

In another district of the centre of the Bay of Plenty, behind an island, 5 evidently an expired volcano, is another line of low sand hills, at the back of which is a flat, intersected by streams, and indicating an expensive want of drainage; over the hills at its back, you pass into a country bordering a large lake, R-o-tu-ro-a; in the neighbourhood of which are wells supplied by boiling springs, 6 where the natives, of a dark night, generally carry a light or firebrand, to prevent mistakes, and being scalded to death. This country again communicates with the Why-kat-to district and the west coast. I have known a large whale boat to be transported from Ro-tu-ro-a Lake to the low country on the east coast; therefore roads must be practicable there. Sailing thence, you come to the Thames, 7 already alluded to; its banks present good land, also the Pe-ak-ko, a tri-

butary stream. Between the Thames and Cape Bren are many confined districts, with small harbours. Between the Bay of Islands and the west coast, eight miles from the former, and somewhat more from the latter, is a pleasing available district, and a station of the Church Mission Establishment; its name the Why-de-mat-ta. Passing over a rude cart track, on which your eyes are confined to keep your feet out of the deep mud, and emerging from a forest, a scene of cultivated country breaks upon you, the first, and, as an effort of cultivation, the most imposing in the country. Here could a sleeping eye awaken forgetful of its transit – it would look on home: the lowing herd, the harrow lying on the ploughed ground, the green sward of pastures, the fenced crops and rose-bound porch, all crowd the mind with images of that land where your childhood first sported, and where your feelings were first created; and you are sad to feel its dearness, to have those feelings beating within you at which, in moments given to speculation, you have often jeered. Take an emigrant, and suddenly expose to him such a scene, and ask him –

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land!

The general surface of the country is exceedingly mountainous, well wooded and watered; and, throughout, these mountains pour their collections

in innumerable streams and rivers; but few, in comparison with their number, navigable except near the sea. After much rain, streams appear which were not before seen; and the stream through which you might have walked, you can hardly swim. 8 Streams and precipitous hills take up a vast extent of the acreage of the island, computed at thirty-five thousand square miles. These mountains are covered either with dense forests of lofty timber of immense girth, from ten to thirty feet and more in circumference, and of extremely straight growth, not giving off a branch for twelve feet from the ground; and shooting across your path, immense thick vines wind, making their first grasp at some distance from the ground, around them, no doubt to their injury, and considerably to the inconvenience of the traveller; who, failing to lower his head or raise high enough his legs, is frequently and unpleasantly caught by them; break them you cannot – they must be cut, being often as thick as your arm. The trees growing close, render the forests very dark, and it is lonely to traverse them. The mountains have also other coverings: the most general is the fern, varying in height from one to six feet, according to the soil. Where the soil is poor, a shrub, sometimes growing to a tree (bearing a fragrant white blossom), called by resident sailors the tea tree, is to be met with; at

the base of the hills you have various shrubs – the large flax plant, small herbaceous plants, and here and there detached grasses: I have observed about seven species, not enough in any one spot for pasture. In the valleys you find the same, the flax being, perhaps, more common than the nettle at home; then in the valleys you meet with marshes and flags, and reeds and rushes growing therein. The scenery of New Zealand obtains its character from the frequent volcanic form of its mountains – from a species of fern, growing as a tree, from ten to twenty feet high, its huge fern leaves ascending a stem covered with coarse, dark, brown hair-like fibres, the leaves inclining from the top gracefully outwards and downwards, the tree presenting a close resemblance to a palm (Arenga saccharifera) – from the flax plant, which in appearance resembles the American aloe, with a narrower leaf; from its centre a slender flowering stem, shooting up to a height of eight feet, the plant itself varying in height from three to six feet – and farther, from a tree which bears as a foliage lateral tufts of long leaves, growing like so many flag-plants upon it.

The coast scenery is the most varied and pleasing. Here a tree, called the Poo-ree-re, exposes a brilliant dark green foliage, and in the spring – the autumn of the northern hemisphere – it is profusely covered with rich crimson blossoms.

The scenery generally is a miniature resemblance

of North Wales; having the peculiarities above described, and wanting the extent of the Welsh vales.

I will here describe the earliest settlement in New Zealand – -Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka (with which, from its situation, very little communication can be held except by sea), as it appeared on my landing there one Sunday in September 1839. The waters of the Bay roll on a semi-circular beach of large gravel, with a grating murmur; the beach projecting is lost in rocks at either extremity. Fronting the beach, some little distance from high-water mark, an irregular and broken line of wooden dwellings, houses, publics, and stores, some with neat verandahs, and generally as respectable in appearance as a village at home, obtruded themselves, and among others, the dwelling of his reverence the Vicar Apostolic; in one part, near the centre, that line was broken by the fence of the native settlement, formed of timber and whole trees of irregular height, some lofty (twenty feet), with their tops carved into grotesque figures; in the rear stood in relief from the hills behind it, the Chapel, a neat, unpretending building, built by the church missionaries, showing its side with four large windows. Numerous whale and other boats were fastened above the wash of the tide, in front of the native settlement; their canoes, coloured red with a black and white scroll on their sides (on the water line); their stems carved into the form of faces, with huge tongues hanging over their chins;

groups of natives wrapped in an English blanket, or mat of their own manufacture: or chiefs a l'Anglois, with a cloth cap and gold band on their head, wearing tastefully over their shoulders a cloak; their under garments being a sailor's check shirt and cloth trousers, those of lower note being nearly naked or variously clad in European garments; their women as fine as they could deck themselves, yet not so tricked out with gew-gaws as savages elsewhere; their children sporting about with but slight clothing; man, woman, and child, smoking, squatting on their haunches, or reposing, or moving to the chapel; European sailors puffing their 'baccy' and yawning; some reeling drunk; numbers of people, as well dressed and well behaved as at home, chiefly male, 9 pursuing their way to the chapel; the back ground of the picture filled up by lofty mountains, their tops forming a ragged outline. On the opposite shore, distant two or three miles, looking neat, and wearing an air of great respectability, were visible the houses of the Mission, a complete village, and on a hill on that shore, looking towards the head, the residence of her Majesty's resident ( – Busby, Esq.), before which, on a high staff, was hoisted the banner of St. George. On a rocky island, at the opposite extreme, was seen the colours assigned to

New Zealand, 10 while on another staff, on Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka Beach, before the dwelling of the oldest resident; flaunted proudly a large English Union Jack, in homage of the day; between the two shores numerous boats sailing and rowing over the waters blue; and riding at anchor, large vessels, whaling and other barques and brigs; nearer the beach, schooners engaged in the coasting trade, all with their colours blowing out: the stars and stripes of America, the tricolour of France, and neat among the rest, the blushing ensign "that oft had stood the battle and the breeze."

I have herein depicted a rugged mountainous island of volcanic aspect, exposing a difficulty of internal communication, owing to the frequency and height of those mountains; and to its numerous watercourses, and the occasional impetuosity of their torrents; the northern extremity extending as a long peninsula from the main body of land, on and about which peninsula has hitherto been the seat of trade – the speculations of a company of gentlemen highly respectable and influential, having planted at the southern extreme of the island a settlement called Wellington.

The residence (Auckland) of her Majesty's Go-

vernment being at that part which I term the waist of the island, from which the peninsula projects, commanding in its site more direct communication with the various parts of this one island than any other district does; while the Company's settlements near Taranaki Bay must he deemed, if the government of the three islands is considered, more judicious, as being nearer the middle island, with which it would offer greater facilities of communication, not, however, at present material, the population on the southern island amounting only to a few souls, and an established trade of many years resorting to the North Island, requiring the earlier attention of government for its regulation and protection. Cook's Straits are seldom visited by vessels homeward bound from the Australian Colonies, and have only been resorted to for the procuring of the black whale.

I confess that my picture, in its present state, is little inviting. I wish to paint with the colours of reality alone, to suit myself to any comprehension, not writing to inform the naturalist or man of science: I state scenes as I found them, as they present themselves to every eye. I need give no warning that the account of any one part or point of a country may not be taken alone to form correctly the emigrant's judgment; with what he has read, details most important have yet to be considered; and now we pass on to climate and soil,

which may render the most rugged rocks inviting, if, in the enjoyment of robust health, industry can obtain there its rewards, and life's closing scenes be looked forward to, unaccompanied by the dread of leaving behind, without provision, the beings our gratifications may have created.

I describe not the southern island, which has only been resorted to by gangs of sailors, employed in the black whale fisheries; their dwellings are on the coast, and they only remain there daring the whaling season; when they return in a vessel sent for them, and the oil they may have procured, to Sydney. Their accounts may not be depended on; and other travellers have as yet touched only at parts of the coast, nor have made any stay on the island. Major Bunbury has lately, I believe, sailed round it on a mission, to obtain the signatures of the resident chiefs to the treaty between them and our most gracious sovereign. From the accounts given by such temporary visitors, no detail can be given to warrant inducements being practised on people to settle there. The general features known of that island are similar to those presenting themselves on the opposite border of Cook's Straits; large flats, fine open districts, are said to have been seen. On strict inquiry of old voyagers, I have invariably been answered, that so-and-so told them. Although the larger island, fewer natives have been met with there, than on the northern, to a degree intimating that subsistence

there is not of easy acquisition, as the savage generally resides where nature requires from him the smallest amount of labour.

The nucleus of a French settlement is landed on nthe east coast of that island, at Bankes's Peninsula. A curious contre-temps occurred in the autumn: a French vessel of war put in at the Bay of Islands; on the morning after her arrival, one of our ships, then at anchor there, weighed and stood out to sea; about ten days after, the Frenchman appeared off Bankes's Peninsula, where he saw the English vessel at anchor, all snug, and English colours flying on shore; soon after, a French whaling ship, le Comte de Paris, loaded with emigrants, brought up, and had to ask permission to land her living cargo.

Whether the French captain had been instructed to communicate the intended emigration of his countrymen to the southern islands to our governor, I cannot say; report states that those intentions were surmised, and the English sloop dispatched to take formal possession, while the foreigners were enjoying his Excellency's hospitalities. The French whaler had among her cargo some cannon, which, however, were not allowed to be landed – to talk French under the English standard.

My arrangement points out the most available and desirable districts for the farmer, as well as the oldest seats of commerce – information the emigrant will find useful on landing.

The information given to the colonist on his arrival, is too often coloured to suit views of parties and promote resident interests, without considering as to whom the advice is given, and must be listened to with due caution.

1 Situated between the 34 deg. and 48 deg. S. latitude, and between the 166 deg. and 179 deg. E. longitude.

2 The island of Mottohora: spelt as pronounced, as will be all native words or names.

3 "The physical character of the islands of New Zealand, points out at once in what way they must be settled. The country has no large rivers, nor, strictly speaking, any navigable rivers at all; but is, on the other hand, richly provided with harbours." – Hon. W. Petre's New Zealand.

4 Yet it admits vessels of 500 tons.

5 Landing from a vessel anchored under the lee of this island, I entered the mouth of a river, through a passage formed below rocks on either side; the sea passing between has a rapid and dangerous fall, as used to be observed between the arches of old London Bridge.

6 In these springs the resident natives immerse their fish, and vegetables in small nets, and after a short time, remove them cooked; the use of aliments so cooked imparts a reddish tinge to the teeth.

7 The Hon. W. Petre's account of this district is at variance with every other.

8 In placing mills to derive water power, this must be remembered that you may not place a building which a torrent might injure.

9 Many were French, though the numbers of that country were comparatively small.

10 Differs from the St. George's ensign, having, in the upper "Canton," next the staff, instead of a Union Jack, a red cross on a blue field, each quarter of which is pierced by a white star.

CHAPTER II. THE CLIMATE AND SOIL.

CHAPTER II.

THE CLIMATE AND SOIL.

FROM the foregoing description, if my account shall have been clear, it will not surprise, that an island, having a surface from which arise so many points of attraction, should be visited, I may say troubled, with a superabundance of rain; which, when in excess, chills the air. There, indeed, "it seldom rains but it pours;" and in the summer of 1839, I have known rain every day for six weeks, more or less, each day. This to an Englishman would appear wet indeed; and as the water must partly run off and down the hills, the low lands are liable to be wet over much, especially where there is a clayey substratum. Occasional defects of season, from excessive actions of sun and clouds, pertain to all countries, nor is New Zealand exempt. Yet I do not think that the summer rains generally are heavy enough to beat down standing crops; the grain ripens quicker under a hotter sun, while the wet, being sooner exhaled, does less harm. The time between the appearance of the blade and the ripened

ear is short; the climate, aided by this rain, renders vegetation rapid; the winds at times, and from any quarter, blow very strong. Gales are frequent and severe. In the latter end of their autumn, in 1840, I had proceeded to the Bay of Plenty on a voyage of inspection. I landed and waited on shore, prosecuting my business; while the vessel in which I came, proceeded to other districts; it was in the beginning of the month of March. I was lodged in one end of a large barn-like building belonging to an English trader, for whom it had been built by the natives. The walls were formed of dried segs and reeds, and broad upright slabs of timber placed at wide intervals; a stratum of segs intervened between my mattrass and the earth. The family of the trader and myself, were in expectation of seeing the vessel return, the trader being in it collecting for the owner, who was also his employer, a cargo of native produce. Towards evening it blew fresh, and directly on shore – at bed time the wind was very strong and increasing – sleep had scarcely been enjoyed two hours before it was scared by the howling gale – the roof was being twisted. Fearing the further powers of the wind, I hastily dressed; on emerging from the building the burst of the gale stopped my breath; and then broke upon my ear the rush of waters, the cry of distress, the shouts of natives seeking their canoes, and hauling those not carried away beyond the intruding waves. Often

the crushing of their houses and fences gave alarm, lest the inmates had not escaped; above all roared the troubled sea. The native settlement was seated near the mouth of a river, one mile distant from the sea; on looking seaward, a phosphorescent light, emitted from the sea, alone broke the pitchy darkness; and by that light, the spray seemed to reach the lower clouds, which hung heavily upon its line of light. The roar of the surf upon the beach was as if sea and wind had engaged in loud and angry strife; then a child would be missed and anxiously inquired after; while unpleasant thoughts crowded as to the fate of the vessel, which, if anchored off the coast, was surely wrecked; no human power could avert her doom; cogitations as to her whereabouts, all ended in the deep, deep sea: and the trader with his two young children were on board – boats could not live through a surf of breakers that neared the clouds – night wore away – the gale was gradually hushed. When morning broke, we saw that the sea had intruded very far beyond, and above high-water mark; land strewed with the material where the day before had stood strong tenements; the crops of maize near the coast prostrate on the ground under a load of seaweed; and the horrible anxiety about the vessel. The second morning, the face of the sea was calm; a canoe was spied with its triangular sail peak downwards, scudding over the deep; it steered through the rocks.

Sixty natives formed her crew; and, joy to the mother! with them were her darlings; also two sailors from the wreck. The vessel, 180 tons, parted from three anchors, and fortunately drove with such force on a low sandy beach as to enable them, at some peril, to jump from her stern, a considerable height, as the waves swept back, or jump in them, and with them as they swept on shore. She soon broke, nor was a plank saved. The children were rescued by ropes fastened to the stern, their ends being hauled on shore. All was happily managed in a few minutes, except to the captain's ancle, severely sprained by his leap. On inquiring of the trader, his recollections seemed to confirm accounts given by the natives, that once in about three years they were subject to such visitations.

In that same gale foundered at sea, having sailed two days previous, and has never been heard of since, a small schooner, bound for Sydney. The skipper was one of those characters which I describe, as common to meet with in these colonies. Time had accumulated his profits, till he acquired the property of a small schooner, about twenty-five tons. His lesiure from the occupations of trade was passed in the gratification of sensual indulgence; his address frank; his conversation blasphemous and obscene. Money, however it might be gained, women, tobacco, and drink, engrossed his thoughts; free in his hospitality, because he wanted and gained by the

society; his mind had no regulating principle. He had on board a woman, with whom he lived as his wife, and two passengers. Before the vessel weighed for Sydney, drinking on shore one day, her free conduct with the passengers occasioned remonstrance, all being more or less drunk. The skipper fell, struck by a knife in his side, and died. The murder was laid to the woman, but denied. They buried the corpse and hurried in the vessel off to sea, soon to meet with a retributive fate; in the gale above alluded to, they all perished. Drink, all glorious drink! – the foxhunter's solace, the seaman's delight, the felon's and the hangman's companion – how many a fortune hast thou washed away! how many a soul hast thou destroyed! what revenues hast thou paid! Frequent indeed, and sad, are its effects to be witnessed out here.

The south wind is very keen in winter, and requires extra clothing. The atmosphere is very rare, and together with the power of the sun, prevents that inconvenience and harm from the rain which we suffer in England, and which would, from the redundancy of wet, be expected in New Zealand. The moisture is there sooner dissipated: you have not the same depression of feeling – the sensations of a heavy atmosphere – you have no withering east to shiver you – nor the dense fog through which you can scarce move, needing artificial light – nor snows lying deep on the ground; snow lodges only on the tops of the very highest

hills, and is not seen at all past Ki-pa-ra to the northward; beyond Ho-ki-anga to the southward the temperature declines gradually, and the winter is colder – the gales in Cook's Straits are then frequent and powerful. You have no leaves turned over by which you may read the seasons, the golden tints which the dying summer leaves to autumn for her vestments; nor the brown and yellow heralds of winter drifting with the winds; no ice to bear a foot – to the northward the ice, if any has formed in the night, and it is there scarcely ever perceptible, the first rays of the morning rase it away. Spring is not perceived by trees and bushes putting on their green. The foliage of New Zealand is ever green throughout; the leaf shed, or replaced, or new buds, affect not the appearance of the country – the temperature and the length of day alone tell of the seasons as they roll.

Winter and spring, summer and autumn, are so blended, you think not of spring and autumn – the first year of residence observes one long season, now cold, now warm; and it is named when you light a fire in the chill of evening, or open a window to cool the morning, not otherwise, except with reference to the past year. In the summer sometimes, but rarely, the mid-day heat ranges to 90 degrees in the shade; light clothing renders the heat inoppressive; when the sea gives an unwaving reflection of trees and mountain, and nothing stirs but insects'

sounds, you are glad to repair within doors; this is but seldom, nor stays the common course of business; even with the native there is no regular siesta taken, fully evidencing that the heat is not oppressive. Children enjoy their pastimes in the sun's rays uncovered; none fearing their power. Though the European may not be unmindful of coup-de-soleil during spring and autumn, which you note only by the shortening of the days, you occasionally feel it cold enough to enjoy a fire within. The long day closes with little or no twilight. The winter can be endured without fire; except towards evening, when a blaze is resorted to. The thermometer now occasionally sinks from 45 degrees to 40 degrees, not often, nor for long. I have described the temperature of the north – the south is much colder, although much difference is not observed in the thermometer. From Ho-ki-anga on the west, and the Thames on the east coast, the cold increases to the southward, where winter is really felt, not however to compare in severity with that of England.

I am certain that the orange would live, and bear fruit luxuriantly, in the northern districts; I doubt its growth to the southward would not be so rapid, except in particular, sheltered situations, and there it would be uncertain in its yielding. The winter at Port Nicholson was not complained of by the settlers. Such is the temperature north and south. The mornings are serene, mid-day mild, evenings pleasant, in

summer; in winter, morning and evening cold, midday temperate.

The rareness of the air, and, on the whole, the evenness of its temperature, should render this island healthy. It is so. The long continued wet can, however, not be endured in any country, whatever the general climate, without bad effects. In England I have observed it affect, especially with the old and young, that membrane which, lining the nose and mouth, is continued throughout the interior of the body, and is extremely sensible of change of temperature, the affections of which often lead to consumption; the action of damp air, surcharged with moisture, is rendered evident on this membrane by various symptoms. In England you have the catarrhal and the influenzal affection; in New Zealand catarrhs are very common, and influenza occasionally severe. When I was in the Bay of Islands, the surgeon of the Church Mission Society had lost his children, as it were swept off, many like fatal cases occurring at the same time. The absorbents, vessels which, as their name denotes, take up, and are by anatomists described to be for purposes of taking up matter (running every where from the surface to the interior of the body), nutritious and otherwise, and of conveying those matters into and about the body – these vessels are very apt to assume disorder; in an excited state of the frame, they are prone to inflammatory action; sudden variations of

temperature and heavy atmospheres I have observed affect them, producing enlargement of glands, followed by eruptions and excruciating rheumatic twinges, or ulceration. Rheumatism is indeed common; I have seen many cases of rheumatic fever in the native settlements – and Europeans are subject to it. I have also noticed symptoms of phthisis – one case I saw a little while previous to death; and cases of mesenteric disease (an affection of the glands about the bowels), likely to have a similar termination. I noticed also frequently among the natives swellings and indurations of the glands (vulgarly called kernels) about the neck; having an unpleasant look of scrofula about them, as they proceed to ulcerations, forming nasty sores. I have succeeded, however, in reducing and dispersing them; therefrom changing my opinion of their nature. Mr. E. J. Wakefield, in an account dated May 1, 1841, apparently written for the information of the New Zealand Company, describes "that they (a tribe with whom he had then, for the first time, become acquainted) seem to be entirely free from all cutaneous diseases, which cover the inhabitants of all parts of Cook's Straits." Fever is rare – dysentery infrequent. Temperate life in an air, not drawn on by numbers, especially near the sea, will conduce to perfect health – avoiding fevers, eruptive and other disorders, which, for the most part, are generated in atmospheres vitiated by numbers, and are independent, although apt to be modi-

fied or aggravated by the climate in which they may appear. From this brief review of sickness in New Zealand, its tendency to catarrh, rheumatism, and influenza will be evident; also its absolute freedom from other diseases; whilst the action of the pure and rare air of the northern districts renovates the body, and imparts cheerfulness to the mind.

Avoid low lands for your residence, and drain well the foundations of your houses; from which, if practicable, you should dig out the mould, and fill up with gravel.

As compared with the climate of England, the climate of New Zealand has a great superiority; the escape from English weather usual from November to April is a sensible relief, and to some systems, which that season is apt to affect detrimentally, the change would be very desirable. The hepatic, yellow-skinned disease of India would be far more likely to yield to its influences than it would to the climate of Australia, or of England. Cases of consumption should not be sent out. As compared with the climate of Australia, its superiority is considerably augmented. The summer heats of Australia render the frame very irritable, and the extreme changes to which you are there liable endanger health. The European, on landing there, finds the action of the skin greatly increased; 11 the perspiration,

incessant, relieves at first, but soon frets the system; in such state any undue excitement, or exposure to vitiated air, produces fever, increasing arterial action, to be allayed only by death; or in such state, if exposed to the causes of cold, a violent dysentery sets in, extremely difficult to manage; uncertain, often fatal in its results; or causing chronic affections, which impede efforts for subsistence. Diarrhoea is frequent, and a virulent ophthalmia; it is no uncommon thing to witness a blind eye amongst the aboriginal inhabitants. The north blasts of Australia blow, as if from the mouth of a furnace; the soil, finely pulverized, owing to deficiency of moisture, is shovelled up by the wind; and, in addition to the suffocating heat, you are terribly embarrassed by showers of dust poured upon you – eyes, nose, clothes are filled with it. I have known it blown through the shingled roof, and descend in clouds where no ceiling has intervened, rendering food uneatable, and linen unfit for use. Spasmodic complaints are frequent – I experienced a severe form of it myself, and the agony was tremendous It was followed, after frequent attacks, by erysipelas about the legs, and inability to move without pain; at the same time I attended frequent cases, all alike to my own. I sought a change of climate; and a month in New Zealand renovated me entirely. Meat in Australia becomes blown in a minute. A limb that was amputated was, previous to the operation, covered with maggots, like

a liver buried in a pot to produce maggots for angling. Parturition to the new comer is not unattended with danger – the dysentery and ophthalmia are the diseases peculiar to the clime, and are highly dangerous; they attack those who arc careful as well as the intemperate: as elsewhere, the latter are most obnoxious to disease. The climate evidently tends to a premature developement, and to early decay; yet old people, whose systems are not sapped by disease, coming from cold climes, and avoiding exposure to mid-day heats and midnight chills, feel an invigoration; and might, if threatened by ill-health at home, prolong existence in Australia. I have met with many elderly persons out there who have praised the climate. I remember one, a Scotch gentleman, who had been a lawyer in Scotland, and had left an extensive and harassing profession, to cure himself of indigestion, in Australia; he would argue long and loudly in praise of the climate. He was relieved of all his symptoms, forgetting that he was there relieved, not only of his complaint, but equally so of those causes which had tended to produce it – the sedentary pursuits and anxieties of his profession, and was there in constant habits of activity most inimical to such disorders.

In and about the settlements, and in the cleared districts, are the most unhealthy residences. In the wilds you may pass the night with heaven for your tester, and the earth your mattress, provided

you keep a burning log at your feet, uninjured. It is given as an evidence of a salubrious climate; it is rather to be looked at as evidence of the dryness of the air, and want of moisture in the land; and to be feared, as any excess in any one quality of climate may affect the frame obliged to long residence, and that which at first was so pleasing and innocuous, becomes absolutely pestiferous.

Australia has no rivers compared with its extent; large bodies of water flowing through a country tend in many ways to mitigate the oppressions of its heat. Here, however, they are too infrequent – the evenness of surface of its immense plains promote objections to it; the severity of its droughts sweep away whole herds in New South Wales. That which affects one part will be found more or less adverse through its whole extent. In South Australia those droughts are not so much felt; but at the period of their occurrence there is excess of heat, and weather prejudicial to farming is observed there; these periods are at intervals of five or seven years; then an affection, they term there influenza, frequently sweeps away whole flocks. Forests have decidedly a great effect on climate, and in Australia, where the surface is so even, the heat is much increased by their removal, as is the case in Germany and Italy.

When in Adelaide, I addressed a letter to the then resident Commissioner, pointing out a necessity for planting the centre of the streets with a line of trees,

as the site of the town was originally covered with large trees expanding their huge branches in every direction.

Certainly more disease appeared as the trees were cleared away; a belt of open land surrounds the town – -judiciously left, but much too clear of timber.

The want of water, in some seasons, is truly a sad one in all parts of the Australian continent. I shall introduce further remarks on Australia in the course of the work.

The rich deposit of alluvial soil in the valleys of New Zealand, under judicious culture, promises years of ample return; the substratum is for the most part clay; near the marshes the soil appears hungry, denoting a need of draining; the sides of the mountain show frequently rich brown mould, an aluminous earth – also on the tops of the lower hills; near the coast, sandy loams are met with, and mixed with decayed shells; the summits of the higher mountains denote a covering of clay, slippy in wet weather, and cracking with the sun. About the Ro-tu-ro-a Lake you meet with pumice-stone, also on the east coat. Before the emigrant pronounces on the soil of a country, he must consider the climate; the soil may not fairly be judged apart from climate, as that conduces to its productive power: the profuse and rapid vegetation of New Zealand denotes goodness of soil and climate – that, in fact, they need but little observation to work profitably.

Clayey soils are frequent: there appears at present a lack of lime, as there are only the shells of small shell-fish as yet found to form it. Clays abound: I have witnessed fair specimens of brick and coarse pottery manufactured in the Bay of Islands; of a blue clay found in the banks of rivers, the natives frequently make use to their hair as soap. The natives use no manure, except burning the fern upon the ground, the ashes being left; they seldom use the same spots of ground for two successive crops. The ground left fallow, soon assumes its primitive covering of ferns: according to the soil, so will you observe the vegetation – high ferns – sow-thistle – herbaceous plants – a tree in its pithy stem, and branches externally resembling our elder – and the flax plant – also large peach trees, indicate good soil in the lower lands. The uplands, bearing also nearly the same varieties and shrubs, tell of an available soil; – the tea-tree bush, and stunted fern, are on poor soil; where you have noble timber, you have good land; not that dwarf trees are to be regarded as indicative of sterile earth. Purchasing land, you will not do well at once to set about clearing it of the timber; no coal being as yet found, your timber is to be looked to for fuel, such as will not suit the sawyer. The fern-covered grounds should first employ your attention to cultivate.

To clear these, you are not situated as the Canadian, who finds, in girdling and felling his woods,

that he undergoes at the onset great fatigues, that ease is as remote from him, as from the toiling worker in the English factories.

The roots of the fern dive deep into the soil, weaving webs laborious to extract; although a labour not equalling in harass to Canadian clearings; offering more gradual introduction to the labours of a life in the wilds. Spade husbandry is best adapted, if labour is to be procured without exhausting capital Ploughs must have strength, particularly in the share, to turn up the roots; and then might not clear the ground so perfectly as would be necessary.

Draining must be well thought of in New Zealand. The eye must not forget this, or decline considering the inclination of surface, as it looks to purchase land; future efforts in such a country will be much impeded by its neglect; and properly attended to, looking at the results obtained by the simple efforts of the natives, we may expect to realize great profits for our operations. They, with their humble labours, have sent vast quantities of produce to the Australian markets, supplying, for many, many years, at the same time, their own tribes and numbers of residents; when to their attempts European skill and energies are added, how great may we expect will be the results, not only to him who so directs his efforts, but also to his fellow colonists on the Australian continent, whose comforts are so frequently impaired by the want of those supplies.

Besides the alluvial soil, you have a loam composed of aluminous earth and vegetable matter; it may require lime, which may be procured with some trouble, however, by the burning of shells of the small shell-fish, formed in great quantity at the mouths of rivers, washed by every tide upon, and into the sands.

Wheat sown in the latter end of August, and all September, will yield well in January. Barley I should expect would thrive well, being a grain most suited to the climate.

The climate about the northern districts would, however, permit seed-time to be extended, so as to harvest in February – offering advantages to farming not to be obtained at home.

The volcanic soil of the Ro-tu-ro-a district may be expected to answer well for vineyards. There is a small plantation of different varieties of the vine at Ho-ki-an-ga, of some years' growth, looking very flourishing, and yielding an abundance of fine fruit. The sides of the hills planted in terraces, as is so frequently done in wine countries, may produce great profit, and render available ground otherwise too steep for working.

The weather experienced in the latter end of autumn and the winter, will enable the farmer to be up and a-doing; when at home, he would be exposed to multifold severities in attempting to do a little, or be obliged to rest in idleness. I should warn the

new colonist not to despise the wet he will he here exposed to, but to be careful to prevent too much of it lodging about his young crops.

It is highly important that climate and soil should not be mistated. From the accounts he reads, the emigrant prepares his plans before he sets sail; and their qualities form great considerations with him. What boots it to a dying man, the money he is turning in? – Is life desirable merely for money getting? A man might peril his own life to obtain wealth for their provision; but ought he wittingly to peril his wife or his children? If life can be enjoyed for money only, why have we, or why should he be induced to venture them in situations which, had he been truly informed, he would have shunned? Is a man justified from listening to interested narratives, in resorting to his pen and exerting his talents to the utmost, to paint scenes he has never witnessed, that he may induce to the peopling of a new country? – If the climate digs graves, have not his writings, teeming with glowing descriptions, supplied their tenants?

This has been done in respect of Swan Biver, South Australia, and other places. There is scarce a colony but has its deluding tales; even with New Zealand, arrows from the goose's wing are shooting in all directions; the same extent of exaggeration does not prevail. It is, however, attempted: everything is done to excite, and that too while various

distresses are clouding the prospects of home. Does it really promote emigration? I say no: companies may be formed with their numerous officers having salaries, to whom such schemes are incomes; and however honest they may be as men, their salaries must give them a direct interest, influencing their statements; they assail a man whose threatening prospects have unsettled his thoughts, the dread of distress weakening the force of the associations at home, those fastenings of society; he is told his circumstances will be improved amidst foreign scenes; he forgets for a moment those associations, thinking only of the distresses he is suffering – he hears the detail of a golden land – Quid non mortatia pectona cogis, auri sacra fames? Home is lost sight of, he sets sail; and landing, he seeks the grounds of promise, and finds them not as they have been painted, and then loathes them as they are; he bends not energy to the necessity – magnifying the evils, he is infested and unsettled by despair.

Absence, we are told, makes the heart's fondness increase; the emigrant soon feels this is no idle tale of poetry; and all that is miserable becomes ten times more so. Perhaps he resorts to the dram, vice and destruction ensuing, or schemes followed without hope fill not his coffers; he, or perhaps his suffering partner, write home, to tell of disappointment, and term themselves victims – to solicit aid. The tale reaches home, and is conveyed from one friend to

another, until a strong under current is towing away public opinion; whilst yet a tide of emigration seems to flow, until all at once it is stopped; and then comes the tale of arrears told to parliament, in a prayer for assistance for numbers of countrymen likely to be destitute upon a foreign strand.

Let us read what was published of South Australia, in 1835: –

"The climate appeared to me very temperate, and not subject to oppressive heats; nor do the rains fall in torrents, as at Sydney."

"For making that experiment (i. e. of colonization), that spot has been chosen concerning whose natural fertility there is better evidence than touching any other wilderness open to British enterprise."

It is a dry climate, and the heat is in mid-summer most oppressive; when the rain does come, it is as heavy as in Sydney.

Considering the information received at the time the above was written, the accounts of fertility in Africa excelled it; also the Texas. What stronger evidence of fertile soil can we have, than is given in the exports of South America, and the accounts of those there resident?

How very strangely the style of New Zealand and South Australian works appear to assimilate!

11 In the day time the skin acts in excess; at night the bladder, from the decrease of temperature.

CHAPTER III. PRODUCTIONS OF THE SOIL.

CHAPTER III.

PRODUCTIONS OF THE SOIL.

THESE may be divided into timber, flax, fruit, vegetables, and maize, growing upon it, and cultured by the natives.

The vegetation of the country is formed by various species of fern, imparting a brown hue to its scenery – their frequent dead stems and leaves deepening that shade; you miss the green swards and green clothing of England; a plain there is a wild looking mass of fern and bushes – you meet with no pastures; a few scattered tufts of grass are to be met with – their insignificance attracts no notice. I have observed about half a dozen species. Were an animal confined to diet itself on grass, it would never have a cud to chew; if the traveller waited until he should reach a green knoll, verily his limbs would stiffen and refuse their support, for he might wander far and wide, and no sward would present itself, which would be ample enough for the seat of a well-fed Englishman. In Australia, the plains are covered by a high grass, a species of wild oat, embrowned by the sun, and there the eye is rarely cheered by the

pleasing verdure of the mother country; and in walking over those plains you are pestered by knocking your toes against the roots of the grass – the roots being wide apart. When the middle of summer has turned, the grass, not cut down for hay, is dried up by the sun, and if it takes fire it is not easily put out again; I doubt not that the very friction of the grass frequently ignites it, causing those vast fires so common there, but which are attributed to the natives, for their own purposes. One day, while at dinner, a neighbour's servant came to beg a stick of fire to kindle her own with; as she went along she dropped an ember a few yards from the house. Seated with my back to the window, I heard a curious sound, and, turning, perceived a running flame encircling the house; my property being within its wooden walls, just erected, I was confused by the suddenness and imminence of the danger; recovering my thought, I hurried out and batted the grass down. I should not have been saved but for a wide path surrounding the house, which had been trodden by the feet of the workmen when employed in the building. This grass is the only pasturage of Australia; it is of a very nutritive quality; a very hot summer spoils what may not have been mown, and retards the growth of the young grass: that country is too subject to hot summers. If the pasturage of New Zealand is not comparable with Australia, it has a species of fern blossoming differ-

ently to other species, the tops of which are browsed by cattle and goats, who feed themselves, nor have needed housing; now that their range must be more limited, they will not fare so well till pasturages appear. English grasses grow well in New Zealand (Australia suits them not) – a well managed homestead may soon attach to it a paddock.

We have said the mountains are covered with timber, or fern, high or short, according to soil, or varieties of blossoming shrubs; over the low lands the same, with the green noble looking flax.

Where the natives may have cultivated grounds, you will observe bushes of cabbage, turnips, onions, radishes, either in blossom or seeded, also small groves of peach trees. The natives, for the most part, reside and plant near the coast; I imagine to be near fishing grounds, fish forming a main article of diet with them.

Before Cook visited these islands, their productions were limited to the fern and the flax and timber. The natives must then have lived on fish, birds, fern-root (one species of the fern furnishing a root nearly tasteless), the nuts off the trees, and a species of rat. So that, in fact, the modern native owes to England many articles of food – potatoes and pigs; and to other foreigners are they indebted for the the rest – the koo-mur-ra, or sweet potato; 12 the tar-o,

a root somewhat resembling the bulb of the tulip, and in taste between the yam and the mealy potato; it is good eating: the peach from the Americans; the melons and the Indian corn from English missionaries.

They stake out the extent of their grounds; clear it of all obstructions, burning all the refuse on the ground – sometimes, when weather permits, setting fire to the fern as it stands. The ground is then turned up, and cleared of all roots – a very troublesome business; it is then levelled, and the process of planting commences.

They sow in September the maize or Indian corn, in small circles of five plants each, a foot or more intervening between each circle; they keep it free from weeds, but the crop needs little tending until February to the north, or March to the south, when they pull off the cobs, suspend them to a line to dry, packing them in baskets for sale and use for themselves and their swine.

They bruise the corn and boil it in water, calling it kow-rowdy-dowdy – I suspect a name given by some jocular pale-face; or they like it boiled green, when it stinks most terribly; they have, however, a gout for it.

The maize yields a sweet flour, not so pleasant to Europeans; I have had it made into cakes, and it proved very sweet; it is a good and wholesome mixture with wheaten flour – a practice much adopted

by the North Americans, who thus adulterate their flour; roasted, it forms a poor substitute for coffee, but as far exceeding it in wholesome and nutritive qualities as wheat may the potato. The colonist will do well to give to his children a beverage of this roasted corn in place of coffee or tea, neither of which yield nutriment, and are decidedly injurious, at least to the child. Besides, to render profits as quick as possible, curtail all expenses, however trifling you may deem them, and your foreign home will the sooner ape the comforts of the old hearth. Maize also feeds poultry, fattens pigs and cattle; it will be therefore a necessary crop, 13 and is a profitable one.

Very frequently the crops fail in Australia, owing to the dryness of the season, and then trading vessels would pay a remunerating price for maize; in common it must only be sown for home consumption. I have bought it of the natives by barter for one shilling the bushel of sixty pounds, when it had been selling in Sydney for from four to six shillings: in Adelaide, South Australia, I have known it sold for twelve shillings; of late, the Mowry has refused to to take less than fifteen or eighteen pence. They are apt to cheat with it; the bushel weight of sixty pounds is understood to be free of the cob, from which

the corn should he pulled and the cob rejected. They will often place the pulled (or shelled as it is termed) at bottom, some heavy cobs in the middle, and pile on them again the shelled corn, so that you lose in weight unless by dipping your hand into the basket you detect the ruse.

The potato is the next crop of the native. The regularity and neatness of their cultivations attracted the notice of Cook. They plant in exact rows with a line, using the potato generally whole for seed; they sometimes plant the eyes; they are particular in selecting their seed, and careful in its preservation; yet the length of time it has been planted without changing the seed, makes it remarkable that it should be so large and so good tasted as it is. They dig them up in June and July; to the northward, before then. In the northern districts they always raise two crops in the season; the next step is to pack them in baskets, somewhat resembling our common seg fishing baskets; theirs are made of the leaves of the flax and segs, are very strong, and contain from fifteen to twenty-eight pounds, and some much larger; these they store in war-rys, or houses formed of earth, either shooting them therein loose, or in the baskets which they call kits.

Potatoes have been a great article of trade – the native selling them to skippers of vessels from Sydney or the Bay of Islands; the latter buying them to supply whalers, as well as the European residents:

except the mission, few have grown a potato, depending on the natives' crops to supply their wants.

The price has been one fig of tobacco, value three half-pence, for a basket which might weigh twenty pounds; two figs for about thirty pounds. I have purchased many baskets weighing a quarter of a hundred weight for a needle and ball of cotton, which might have cost me a penny; the price mainly depending on the urgency of the natives' wants. I consider that traders used to purchase from the native at not more than twenty-five shillings per ton. The New Zealand potato will realize never lower than six pounds per ton in Sydney; it is not so fine nor so large as the produce of Van Diemen's Land, which sells at from ten to fifteen pounds, and much higher in scarce seasons; and has sold for 30l the ton in South Australia.

In the Bay of Islands the traders re-sold them at forty to sixty shillings. The price is now higher; at the same time, the native does not exert himself to increase his supply. A considerable trade must be done in potatoes with New Zealand. Potatoes grown in manured land are very fine in every respect. The koo-mur-ra, or sweet potato – this is another very important crop; the natives raising it more for their own consumption, not being in demand among Europeans. They plant the tubers in mounds raised slightly above the level of the ground; when the crop is in leaf, its green leaves and regular rows give

a pleasing feature to the scene they appear in. It used to he expected that the flax plant would become a staple article of extensive trade. It is every where abundant in good soil, where it has moisture, but not in marshy soil. It is a fine looking plant, growing from three to six feet high; the leaves are of a deep green, diverging from the base upwards and outwards; from its centre a slender and tapering brown stem shoots up some eight feet, terminating in dark unattractive blossoms, which are succeeded by black seed vessels. Mr. Darwin, 14 who visited the Bay of Islands in 1835, in H. M. ship Beagle, describes the flax as resembling the iris in appearance. It is a most useful plant to the native, who splits the leaves longitudinally, and makes thongs and fastenings of them, which he terms herry-gecks; it has great tenacity in its green state. I have had a wild boar brought to me, that would easily have mastered two unarmed men, entirely secured by the thongs of the flax-plant; one native sitting down on the animal while he bargained with me for the price. They also use it green to make baskets for holding their stores.

To form it into flax for their nets, fishing lines, and clothes, they first scrape the leaf with a small shell, then steep it in water (perhaps a ley made with

wood ashes), and after a certain time, they bruise it on a large stone with a piece of wood.

This is a process so tedious as to exhaust the patience of the natives; and now, where they have much intercourse with Europeans, so that they can purchase clothes of our manufacturers, they altogether decline its use – only among remote tribes can you now purchase the flax, and that not in sufficient quantity for trade.

They make very neat mats of the flax – formerly their only clothing, now but little used.

The hopes entertained of this flax have not been sustained by experience, and like many other matters, it seems to be given up because of its first failure. According to the evidence of those who have tried it rope manufactured from it is wanting in tenacity; and it soon wears in parts exposed to constant friction. This should not cause it to be at once thrown aside; for if, by any particular process yet to be discovered, it may be found to possess that tenacity, then should we form an article with which we could trade in all markets, and obtain for the produce of our own colonies a superiority over every other nation.

To create such an important trade is surely worth the attention of government, especially now that her flag is flying on those shores.

I copy from an excellent work, the "Popular Encyclopaedia, or Conversations-Lexicon," the following succinct account of the plant: –

"FORMIUM TENAX. – The fibres of this plant are used by the inhabitants of New Zealand for cords, and clothing, instead of hemp and flax, to which they are much superior. They are, in fact, stronger than any other known vegetable fibres, hardly yielding, in this respect, to silk. The stem of this plant grows six feet high and upwards, is straight, very firm, and is branched or paniculate above, and sheathed at base, where they are disposed on two opposite sides of the stem, and somewhat resemble those of the common cat-tail; the flowers have six petals, six stamens, and one style. In its native country it grows on both wet and dry places, and is apparently adapted to every kind of soil, but seems to prefer marshy places. 15 The fibres are very long, of a snowy whiteness, and possess the lustre of silk.

"French enterprise has been awakened to the importance of introducing the culture of this plant It bears the climate of the south of France, and has remained in the open air throughout the year. It has succeeded perfectly in Normandy, producing seeds which have been sown and proved fertile.

"Every year, as the inner leaves shoot upward, it loses the outer; and consequently, the outer leaves should be pulled off when they have acquired their full growth, while the stock may remain in the ground for years. It may be multiplied by off-sets, which are

separated in the spring. The method by which the New Zealanders obtain the fibres is very tedious; accordingly, the French chemists have devised other modes, which promise success."

And if they do succeed it will not be to the profit of England! Has the recent emigration of Frenchmen to these southern islands any connection with this speculation?

Of what a trade may they deprive us, unless we are on the alert. I recommend the New Zealand Land Company to turn their attention to this subject, in consideration alike of their emigrants, their pockets, and their country.

The natives also sow melons and pumpkins, which grow luxuriantly. The melon requires a sandy soil, and yields, in the open air, an abundance of fine fruit, to which the natives as well as ourselves are partial.

A plant introduced by the missionaries, termed the "Cape Gooseberry," growing low, thrives exceedingly well, and bears a succession of blossoms and fruit, being more in shape like a cherry than a gooseberry, in size as large as a cherry, of a yellow colour, throughout the year; it is not much regarded there, but the facility of raising it, and its pleasant sub-acid flavour ought to claim attention.

The Fern-plant need not be described further than that there are numerous species, only one of which furnishes an edible root, eagerly grubbed up by swine,

and resorted to by natives when other food fails them; they place it in the fire, and roast it till it is well blacked, they then bruise it, and eat it either warm or cold. The tops of this fern are nutritive; this may account for cattle preserving here a glossy hide and good carcass, as on first landing a stranger would wonder how the animal could possibly be subsisted. A variety of herbs clothe the lower lands; lofty flags, which the natives cut, and dry, and make into flooring mats, and use to form the walls of their warrys, i. e. houses. In travelling through the wilds it is a usual thing for the natives "to litter you down" at night with a good bundle of these dried segs. You meet with groves of flowering shrubs; among them, I have noticed one bearing a fruit resembling in form the long black pepper of commerce, one end of the seeming pepper being soft, and of a reddish hue, and tasting sweet, and the other firm and extremely pungent.

The efforts of missionaries for some years, and of others, have succeeded with asparagus and all our vegetables; rhubarb, apples, and all our fruits; figs, and many of a warmer clime; hops, gorze, and flowers innumerable; the geranium growing bushy out of doors. Peach trees grow well from slippings, and bear fruit in two years.

These results were evident six years ago.

Mr. Darwin observes – "The almost entire absence of associated grasses, which forms so remarkable a

feature in the vegetation of this island, may perhaps be accounted for by the open parts being the work of man, while nature had designed the country for forest land." In the lowest valleys, however, where neither timber nor fern grows, there are only detached grasses to be met with.

I saw good crops of wheat growing when I was in the Bay of Islands, and they yielded a good ear in abundance. I remember two in particular; one covering the top of a hill, and the other on the sides; for neither, had the land been manured.

The efforts at farming have been, however, chiefly confined to the missionaries.

The next important production is the timber. There are several kinds fit for various uses. The first tree that attracted attention was the cow-ry, from its fitness for spars and masts, being a light, straight growing, and tapering tree, working easily; it soon dries, and is then apt to snap; for several years vessels have been sent for cargoes of this timber from London and the Colonies; it is in demand for the navy. In 1840, one of H. M. ships, the Buffalo, was anchored in Mercury Bay, to the southward of the Thames, loading with cow-ry spars, when she drove on shore in a gale and was wrecked. The average value of these spars in the country is about £65; some have realized in London £180 and upwards.

This pine (the Dammara Australis) grows to a

height of ninety feet, of considerable girth; has been met with measuring as much as forty feet in circumference. It yields a resinous gum, works very easily, and is suitable for any work about a house; in-doors or out; in the grain it is not unlike deal; it planes very smooth.

The wood combines strength with lightness; it is worth 3d, and 4d. a foot in half and three-quarter inch plank in the Colonial markets.

This tree is not met with to the southward past the thirty-eighth degree of latitude.

The next timber in common use is the ki-kee-tare, much inferior to the cow-ry; it works well, and may be used in-doors; for although houses are built of it, yet it is not well suited to stand exposure; it shrinks, and the better plan is to nail it up loosely at first, and not fix it until it has shrunk; it will then be found very useful for lining houses.

This timber sells in the Colonies; being used too green, has injured its character. It approaches the cow-ry in qualities and appearance; is found all over the islands, and is a much better timber when growing to the southward.

No other timber grown in New Zealand is known in the markets, except from occasional visits made in the Colonies, by vessels built in New Zealand; there are two, furnishing a heavy close grained and durable wood, whose growth is favourable for a ship's timbers. When I was in Doubtless Bay; I heard

that a cedar had been discovered there; to the correctness of the report I cannot vouch. There are three or four other trees made use of by the natives, and growing all over the island. The to-ta-ra, a more durable and closer grained wood than any, except the poo-ree-dee, which is only fit for ship's knees and keels; from its appearance, I should esteem the to-ta-ra, for general purposes, before the cow-ry. I have seen it in old canoes and warrys of the natives, evidently of many years standing; and good planks being worked by the natives out of logs that had been years under water, induce me to think highly of the timber.

There are a few other trees used for timber by the natives, one of a pale rosewood colour, and to appearance, a wood suitable for any purposes. The hee-noo, furnishes in its bark a most permanent black dye, and used for such by the natives. Another small tree is extremely fragrant in its wood, dead or alive, of a white colour. Another, the mar-noo-ka, is a close, heavy wood, used by the natives of old for spears, clubs, offensive weapons, and agriculturing tools – it is a tree rarely of any size.

The grass-tree, the appearance of which I have before described, as if it had growing on its branches, instead of leaves, a number of plants, like our iris, or large tufts of broad grass.

The tree-fern before noticed – a bush resembling our elder in its pithy stem and branches, and their

cuticle; from which depend bunches of a small fruit, yielding a deep purple juice, very palatable; and a deep purple stain to whatever it touches. The seeds are poisonous, producing convulsions and death. One day I observed one of my pigs running after its tail, and playing divers antics, until its hind legs became paralysed, and hung drooping on the ground. The natives I employed as servants, pointed to the tree, and said "no good food there, pig die;" to prevent any mistake, I told them to use the knife, and they anticipated the event. A child at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka was seized with convulsions after eating the seeds, and with difficulty saved from the grave. The natives say if they are incautious it affects them alike: it should be extirpated by the settler on his first arrival, to prevent injury to his stock.

The forests are close masses; the trees shoot directly upwards like bristles on a hog's back, growing close together; they obstruct the light, and an immensity of huge bines twine themselves around them; the foliage is scant; they grow many feet, some near fifteen feet from the ground without giving off a branch; their branches are very small, particularly as compared with their amplitude in girth and then-height.

The paths in the forest are very difficult to tread. The surface of the ground is embarrassing to the feet, from the large roots which lie on the surface. Another difficulty arises from the vines, which tra-

verse space in every direction, shooting across as prompted by caprice to spring from the root of one tree and embrace its opposite neighbour; it requires great power to break them. They vary in size, the older ones being as thick as a large wrist, tapering off to the size of rod iron; they obstruct your way, catching you on the forehead, waist, and legs; and frequently their toughness, not yielding to your force, and you are inadvertent, perhaps chatting with some one following you – away you go, mayhap into some gutter, or more fortunate still, are received into a muddy hollow of the footpath; a scene far more diverting to witness than to enact. When the foremost stops, his followers are stayed also, the path only admitting of progression in single file; the proximity of the trees, and the sudden turns of the path, intrude at every moment. Frequently a giant of days gone by, uprooted, has fallen across, and you have to climb over and descend into pools which his presence has made. You cannot walk many miles across the country without traversing a wood, emerging often from one upon the banks of a river of varied depth, through which you must wade, and again penetrate the recesses of a wood.

To be benighted in one is, as may be imagined, unpleasant; to be overtaken by night, uncertain of your direction, while rain is pouring down, is most dreadful; to lie down (for in the dark you cannot proceed) with soaked garments, on the clay soil,

the trees conducting the rain all around, and difficult to keep in a fire, is a most wretched plight to be in. Gold, wet, and hungry, in the dread stillness, to await the light of dawn: I have had to endure such a situation. The natives showed much nonchalance; the sailors who were with me kept on their yarns, with an occasional grumble and a joke; an old resident, drunk, who had joined us for our company, disturbed us more than anything else, with blasphemy and growls.

The cow-ry timber has been for several years in great demand in the Colonies and for the navy. The chief harbours resorted to for its shipment were Ho-ki-an-ga and the Thames. Some now load at Kai-pa-rah. Nearly all, indeed it may be said all the land bearing this timber has been purchased of the natives, by residents in the Bay of Islands, the Thames, Ho-ki-an-ga, and Sydney. Hardly a stick remains to the natives – the trees growing in situations handy for shipping, are long since felled; the finest are removed, skimming the deep, no longer tenants of a forest, except of masts; in this way has New-Zealand given her aid to propel our commerce. Now the remoteness of good timber from places of shipment, the forests, which for this purpose I have described, through which it has to be hauled before it can be floated to the ship's side, require so much labour, that the tree is scarce procurable: old residents effect it by their influence with the natives;

until labour is redundant, new settlers cannot do this. The old residents, for sawn timber, and to save expenses, generally take their saw-pit to the trees, instead of bringing the tree to the pit.

The sawn wood has fetched from twenty to twenty-five shillings per hundred: I expect it will now be worth nearly that in New Zealand.

To eastward, on White Island and Motoo-ra Island, 16 in the Bay of Plenty, but more particularly on the White Island, extremely fine sulphur is readily and easily procured. I cannot think why vessels have never been freighted with it, especially when freights are scarce in Sydney. The attention of the New Zealand Company might be profitably directed to it. Pumice is also to be collected there.

Lead, coal, iron, are said, to have been traced. Mineral treasures most probably abound – anticipated from the appearance of the mountains, and their occasional resemblance to South America, from which continent they are not far distant. Lead and iron will not at present tend to benefit either the Colony, or the Mother Country; while she can furnish her manufactures, they cannot be worked with profit – nor should be put forth as inviting features. Coal is another consideration; if it be found, it will in the course of time be profitable to work, especially should a passage be effected through or over the Isthmus

of Darien, which, rendering communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans more immediate, may give to every depot of coals an importance; even now resident wants almost require them. They form a brisk trade at Sydney – -New South Wales having her Newcastle as well as England.

There is lime-stone near the Bay of Islands: it is at present much wanted. Excellent materials for bricks abound; and I have seen a serviceable coarse pottery manufactured at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka.

In Australia the timber is mostly of one kind. There are varieties; the chief timber of commerce there, is the Stringy bark, a very heavy splintering wood, and extremely hard, blunting the chisel, suitable for fences, roofs, palings, and house building.

Two kinds of gum-trees, heavy woods, more splintering than the former, fit for fences, sleepers, and work of that kind. Cedar, a soft wood, of a pale hue, becoming paler in the heart of that country; it is a valuable wood for cabinet work.

The forests in Australia contain large trees, which, unlike New Zealand, observe a distance between, and expand huge branches in every direction. There is a great difference between the forests of the two countries, although the same oppressive stillness pervades both. The sun's rays penetrate the one in every direction, whilst the other is very sombre; yet either cast an equal gloom; you feel the stillness. The scenery of Australia is monotonous. One forest, with its charred stumps, is as any and all of its forests;

one range of plains describes another, with the constant groves of yellow blossoming trees, affording, whilst those blossoms last, their only beauty to the spectator's eye.

The plains are so solid, traversed by great cracks, if you break the soil it separates into very fine dust; as Mr. Darwin observes, "no where is there an appearance of verdure, out rather that of arid sterility." Everything so glaring, hot, and hard, that an eye, not thinking of the pocket, is averted in disgust, and the foot presses on the soil as if it were only fit to be trodden.

I have seen the tobacco-plant growing luxuriantly on the east coast – why not encourage the native in its culture? Let them grow it, whilst our manufactories, to be established, would keep foreigners out of the market.

Time and circumstances draw around us associations weakening those of earlier scenes; but the embers are still alive. Cockney or rustic, the poor trader or poor gentleman, out here, will find that they have left some scene behind to which their memory is as constant as the needle to the Pole, differing only in the metal, to which it gives a temporary turn; the one to iron, the other to gold; nor is there ever any one born and educated on the soil of England who, amid the most fragrant of exotic grandeurs, forgets the triad of his land – the shamrock, the thistle, and the rose.

12 I tend to consider their koo-mur-ra, or sweet potatoes, as indigenous – Cook noticing plantation grounds.

13 Is it not almost second to wheat, mixed with which it increases the nutritive qualities? It need not be despised in Europe. Might not maize and rye be imported duty free, and by mixing with wheat render to us a cheaper bread?

14 Narrative of the surveying voyages of H. M. ships Adventure and Beagle – a most excellent work.

15 Not exactly marshes – it prefers a clay soil.

16 These islands have been purchased by Mr. Tapsal, many years resident at War-ka-tar-ney in the Bay of Plenty; being on the high seas, invalidates the purchase.

CHAPTER IV. ANIMALS, ETC.

CHAPTER IV.

ANIMALS, ETC.

THE animals of New Zealand are few, and all imported. They have traditions which depict a very small rat and a very small dog; if they once had being, they are now lost in an indescribable mongrel and the Norway rat, introduced by the shipping, and from its appearance, I should say, very much to its own satisfaction, and certainly to the annoyance of the native, who, if reminded he ought to be thankful to Britain for his pigs and potatoes, always puts in, "and rats" It had been well that the nuisances imported had stopped here.

The native dog too has disappeared, and a breed of many parents supplies his place. Every family has a dog, and not one but a pack, which they leave to provide for themselves; and are, with their lean carcasses, slouched tails, and fox noses, as great a set of thieves as ever pestered a man's hen-roost. They should be trapped and shot without mercy; not that I advise the new settler to point a gun at them, as their owner would be certain to demand an exces-

sive payment; and future feud might thereby be occasioned; it must be, to use an Australian (New South Wales) phrase, with respect to their poor aboriginals, done quietly, to save your poultry.

The pig of the country was first imported by Cook seventy-two years ago; and several other navigators have added various breeds. A very common one, has a long snout, flat sides, and stands high off the ground; feeds voraciously, and is slow to fatten. Many mixings of Chinese breed are also met with. I have met with a hog, not very young, which, when stripped inside and out, and duly cleaned, furnished three hundred pounds of meat. Such an animal is rare. There are many parts of the island where the pig runs wild. The native generally turns out a sow big with young (having marked her first) in some distant land belonging to his tribe; the place has also a sign by which he can discover it again; he places food in one spot every day for a short time; and goes to count the young as soon as he thinks they have appeared; when grown enough, he catches and marks them; and again catches them when he wants them to be fatted for bartering. The food collected by those swine is chiefly herbage, the fern root, and small shell fish washed up by every tide, which the animal assiduously grubs out of the sand. 17 At home the native feeds him at his own meal-time

on boiled potatoes, and Indian corn; the hogs often famish over two hundred pounds of meat. I have stated his common food to guide the settler; who, however, by a better food and better system of feeding, obtain greater results.

The meat is not nearly so gross as our English pork; it is not so fat; it salts well, makes good hams and bacon; an article of diet you have little opportunity of curing in Australia, where, however, the pig multiplies fast. The native exchanges his fattened pig for a blanket; two for a twenty-five pound cask of gunpowder. When resident with a distant tribe, I have bought animals at the rate of three halfpence per pound; they are now scarce and dearer, fresh pork being retailed in New Zealand at eight-pence and ten-pence, and salt pork at seven-pence.

A considerable trade has been carried on between New Zealand and Sydney, and whalers, for pigs, and salt pork. To this is now added a demand on the spot, so that the pig is an important and profitable creature, with which, at present, no other can vie. The colonist should be careful to buy up rice, ship biscuit, and other provender, which is frequently sold by auction at a low rate, as damaged provisions, and which, purchased judiciously, will make a very profitable reappearance in the shape of pork. The price of food in the other colonies renders pork dear there, generally one shilling per pound. Cattle milk, and feed well – such as have hitherto appeared; the missionaries are

the largest holders; now herds are to he met with at the southward, in the Company's settlements. The beef killed in New Zealand is a much sweeter meat than that of Australia, which I consider coarse-grained and wanting in fat; a defect not to be noticed in New Zealand; a shilling and sixteen-pence per pound is asked for beef. Sheep – almost the only proprietors of sheep are the missionaries; they haye been the longest residents, and time has increased their means; the mutton is good, but scarce, and the wool bears a good character in the London markets. If the settler has means, I would not advise him to purchase many sheep, but wait till his own experience can direct him. Cattle and sheep, to thrive in New Zealand, require extensive ranges; as the country is now, the necessary acreage might not, for divers reasons, be attainable, and the care of them will be found expensive.

If a grazier or sheep-farmer emigrate, Australia, especially Port Philip and South Australia, should be preferred. I cannot commend the speculation, albeit so many recommendations are pronounced upon it; the returns are become much more uncertain – the risks and expenses greatly increased. Influenza has swept away whole flocks, over and over again; while to settle now, you are forced so far into the wilds, that the carriage of your produce is difficult, sadly expensive, and the rate of labour is high.

The goat thrives remarkably well, yielding good

milk and butter, and its flesh is no bad substitute for mutton. They are raised in value; and a settler, outward bound, whose ship may touch at any intermediate port, will do well to buy, if he can purchase them at ten shillings per head, and can agree with his captain to convey them at a moderate freight. They are troublesome to keep out of planted ground.

Australia has many animals; to the most troublesome of which only will I allude – the wild dog, which is dangerous to sheep and poultry, and in some districts very destructive; it hunts at night in packs and singly, proclaiming its vicinity by a low howl.

We may now allude to the fish: to the northward none, except eels 18 and a small fish found under old timber lying in the mud, are met with in the rivers, nor, I believe, any to the southward; near the sea, where the tides reach, the rivers abound in fish and shell-fish, which I will enumerate: the young shark, from one to six pounds weight, highly prized by the natives, and often reserved for the chiefs; the skate; the snapper, has a high shoulder, tapering gradually to the tail, and abruptly to the nose, is from one to ten pounds weight, is a firm fish, of no particular flavour; the gurnard, the bream, and two or three others, more rare, which I cannot name; these are caught on the coast and in the harbours, and are met with about Australia, as well as New

Zealand. Within the mouths of rivers a species of mullet are met with, weighing from eight ounces to three pounds, well tasted, about the best fish caught there; in the moonlight nights they leap high out of the water, and the natives then frequently catch them in their canoes; a fish, called kar-why, in exterior like to our salmon, weighing from three to six pounds, the flavour is good, not remarkable, nor is it at all equal to salmon, and its flesh has not the same pink hue; a fish like mackerel, but not in flavour or size – the par-kiri-kiri, met with about rocks, and some others, two or three kinds of smaller ones. About the rocks also you meet with mussels, oysters, and small crabs, also large craw fish; shrimps, with numbers of cockles, perriwinkles, and the pee-pee, which the natives and their swine are for ever at low water grubbing up, and feeding on. The price of fish is according to weather and demand; in general moderate.

But the fish of all others swimming the deep waters of the Pacific, and which has tended to our acquaintance with these islands, is the sperm whale; in search of which England and her colonies, America, France (and I have seen a Brazilian), have all for years dispatched ships. In their quest they have generally remained out two years, when they have returned, and some in half the time, with their casks full of sperm oil. While they are out, ships and crews frequently stand in need of refitting, for which

purpose they steer for some harbour in the Pacific where they can procure fresh provisions at a cheap rate; they have generally resorted to the Bay of Islands. Many of the masters carry with them, especially the Americans, articles to barter with the natives; by which means they have diminished the expenses of the voyage. Other wants would frequently arise from their pursuit, as injury from whales to the boats and their gear, and from gales to the ships; and frequent demands caused persons who had been masters of whalers, knowing these wants, to settle on the island, bringing with them from London and Sydney a supply of such articles as were in demand; in this way a considerable trade accumulated. Whether the number of the whales is on the decline in these seas, either from being scared by commerce and the pursuit after them, or from their slaughter, cannot be exactly stated; it may be surmised that an animal, of which the annual increase of two is only one, would decrease by an indiscriminate slaughter of male (or bull), female (or cow), and young (or calf); the latter is not often, but sometimes is inadvertently or unavoidably killed. Ships stay out now over three years, without obtaining a full cargo. The expenses of outfit and maintenance of a large vessel at sea are very great; and if the trade declines, a most important use of these islands will be lost. Whilst whales were easily found within one or two thousand

miles, their utility was evident, as a resort for refitting – the utmost care not always avoiding the injuries occasioned by weather, or by the attacks of infuriated whales on the boats; when struck, they will often go down and rise again directly under the boat, by which they have been harpooned, sending the men flying into the sea, and cracking the boat in two. A ship has been sunk by the attack of a maddened whale.

As a resort for refitting, New Zealand would offer advantages, increased by colonizing, for the purpose of supplies; the Friendly and other islands in the Pacific, would be more inviting, as provisions would be there obtained at less cost; until the operations of agriculturists shall have again reduced the prices, whaling captains will not incline to resort to New Zealand. Being, however, there resident, our countrymen might follow the pursuit in small schooners of 100 tons, the expenses of which would be less, they would be always near home, and be more readily filled, and be at much less expense than foreigners, except wages; the oil might, as it accumulated, be shipped for England. North of the line, the ever-busy Yankees are adopting this plan.

The sperm oil trade is, and will still be, to an extent, beneficial to settlers; but for the extent of the benefits, sufficient merchants are already resident.

The black whale oil is another important trade, to which, however, the attention of merchants at

Port Jackson, New South Wales, has been long directed, and the grounds are well fished; therefore, as a speculation, it may not suffice to draw a person from England. That is a trade (i. e. catching the whales in the bays) which the occupation of the islands, as territories of the crown, gives into our hands exclusively, and should be carefully maintained: if a settlement of the French is to be permitted, they will not only compete with us with the flax, but also in the pursuit of the black whales in our bays of New Zealand.

From this detail we turn to less important matter, the feathered creation seen here of the edible kind. There is a large bronze coloured dove met with in the woods; wild ducks, poor in flavour, and teal; on the coast you meet with curlews and red bills; when you reside near one, you are generally distant from the others. Of those not edible, there are, first, a very peculiar dark green parrot; also a diminutive of the Australian emu, is found past the East Cape. This bird, called by the natives kee-wee, is rarely to be seen in the day time; it has very small wings, not able to support its body in flight, but adding a power to its progression; its covering is more like hair than feathers; the natives pursue it in the moonlight. Large hawks, herons, owls, varieties of small birds, and to the northward I have met with a green parroquet; about the mouths of rivers are always flocks of shags. One bird, in size and flight

like the thrush, but otherwise essentially different, having a dark green plumage, and pendent on its breast four white feathers, disposed like a clergyman's bands; taken young and caged, it imitates closely every sound it hears; flying wild it sounds only three or four notes, loud and full.

Poultry thrives not better than in England; ducks do well – they are the best layers in this country. I expect it will not be found equally suitable for turkeys. Geese also do well. I have purchased fowls at five shillings per couple in settled districts; now, however, the price is enhanced: the settler should purchase on the first opportunity, and not think of building his house before his poultry pen is raised, some stock in it.

In Australia poultry is, in districts, plentiful, not generally cheap; in 1838 and 1839, in Adelaide, I gave as much as 10s. per head. Considering the number of settlers, poultry is scarce in New Zealand.

New Zealand is well adapted for the pheasant and partridge; more so for the black-cock and grouse; perhaps, when more important avocations permit, the settler will endeavour to cater for out-door amusements; hunting being out of the question, he will desire to find food for his gun, and to increase the happiness of his own creation, trespass upon the happiness of another, as a crocodile seeks after a fish – the simile not holding, inasmuch as one preys for sustenance, and the other for amusement alone.

Among the insects is a most pestilent small black mud or sand fly, as the Europeans term them; the natives name them nar-moo; it is a most terrible nuisance; countless myriads are, throughout the greater part of the year, besetting the dweller on the flats; time neither accustoms you to them nor them to you; ever and anon you raise your hand to wipe them off; they hardly settle before they bite and draw blood, leaving such an itching sensation behind, as to create excessive irritation (to be best allayed by cologne and vinegar); frequently, when too much rubbing and scratching is resorted to, ulcers, troublesome to heal, 19 are caused; of all the troubles that fly, these little black creatures are among the worst. I noticed them attack also the natives, but not with apparently equal relish, as the white skin draws an undue share of visitors. Mosquitoes are troublesome on the coasts; in Australia they are sad nuisances; in Sydney they get through even the mosquito nets. I have seen there females with their faces and arms all blotched with their bites; to rub much is attended with equal risk of ulceration to the bite of the New Zealand gna-moo; and then the constant buzz they keep up from seven P.M. to four in the morning, is often inimical to all repose. Centipedes are very common and venomous in Australia. I observed one day, in Adelaide, a labourer, minus a

finger; I asked him how he lost it, he said he had been lying asleep on the ground, and he woke up, feeling a stinging sensation on the lost finger, on which he saw a centipede; the venom rapidly swelled the arm – along the inner side red lines became distinct – fever ran into delirium – and he was fortunate to resume health with only the loss of his finger. There are snakes, too, in Australia, venemous, whose bite is mortal in half an hour unless the precautions of extracting the venom by suction, and excising the bite, are promptly attended to. One day, walking in the wood with three companions in single file, a sudden exclamation from the hindmost arrested our steps; looking for the cause, I spied under the very foot of the foremost, a black snake wriggling in a hollow of the path; as he pursued his winding way without turning, and at an accelerated pace, we concluded the hollow had been sufficiently deep to keep off the contact of the shoe. Although the occurrence was espied and over, and the danger past almost with its espial, the expectation of seeing the reptile raise his glossy head and strike at the leg, made our hearts sound within us, knowing its venemous character; albeit, Deo volente, the use of my knife, and application of a cautery, would have released the person from danger. The expectation of any danger is far more alarming than grappling with it; few cases occur, but the danger exists. From such reptiles New Zealand is free. St.

Patrick has certainly visited that island as well as his 'own green isle.'

In the ever-present gum tree of Australia nestle millions of beetles, hardly to be discerned among the leaves, keeping up throughout the day their incessant monotonous note, a sound resembling somewhat a cricket's chirp; this is a nuisance. To this, as night draws on, succeeds the croaking of the bull-frog; an augmentation of the sound produced by drawing a heavy table over an uncarpetted floor, but far more unpleasant. Wherever you place your foot, you cover innumerable tribes of ants, of which insect there are very numerous varieties, and of all sizes; a common brown ant infests your house, and if not well protected, your sugar bason is soon filled with them. There is also a white ant, very destructive to timber; to prevent that destruction, the bottoms of timbers inserted in the ground, or lying on it, should be charred; this insect will also destroy papers, &c. Sometimes a winged ant alights with his hordes on your table, and dropping their wings, proceed unceremoniously to inspect your room. From ants New Zealand is not free, but they are few, and not nuisances there. The number of these insects, and its clime, would well adapt Australia to the pheasant. Next among insect unpleasantries is a flea (also in New Zealand, but it may be kept off there), far exceeding his English cousin, both in ubiquity and pertinacity; extreme care hardly

avoids them. I remember overhearing emigrants talking on first landing in South Australia – "Well, this here country looks brown enough, but these fleas "will do me brown; if one of Meux's dray-horses had walked over me last night, he could not have bothered me more. See here – they've piebald me. how fond they must be of English blood!"

The flies are numerous and troublesome in both countries; in Australia, and there only, during summer, the activity of the blow-fly in its operations on meat and dead animal matter is very great, and the appearance of the maggot follows very quick on his visitations.

17 The pig does not fatten in this wild state.

18 The natives dry the eels, and roast them as they want them.

19 Melted wax dropped into these ulcers, when deep and sluggish, incline them to heal.

CHAPTER V. THE NATIVE.

CHAPTER V.

THE NATIVE.

THE past and present state of the native is so far necessary to be known by the intending emigrant, as giving him an insight into the character of the denizen of those wilds in which he would build his home. He will be frequently brought into contact with him, for no one has hitherto set down in that country, however apparently remote from any native settlement, who has not in a few days been paid a visit of ceremony (inspection) – occasionally he must barter with them for their produce or their labour; and such contact will render welcome an account of their character and habits. The men are generally fine athletic fellows, possessing as much variety in height and features, in eyes and hair, except red, as our own nation; featuring also the Jew; and occasionally the negro. Their hair for the most part is in short curls, in colour black; the colour of their skins is but a shade darker than our own, or a very trifie more. The dark hue of their countenances is given by a black dye inserted into punctures of the

integument, called the tat-too, and not by the colour of the skin; although it has been stated, there are no blacks, Mow-rees, for so they style themselves. It is singular they call water Why-mow-ree, themselves Mow-ree, and their country and clime are loaded with water. Some are more, some less, tattooed, than others; these lines are said to be considered by them as armorial bearings are by us; they inherit them by descent, and acquire them by deeds. This relates to the marks on their faces; other parts of their bodies are also decorated, especially the buttocks, arms, and calves of their legs; this, as they always go to war stark naked, is deemed ornamental to the warrior. The lines are generally circles very accurately described; a small tool in form, and used like a chisel, makes the punctures into which the dye is inserted (when in the lips the hue is blueish); the circles on the nostrils were formerly described on a deed as the signature of the marker, and termed by them their amoko; now they generally sign their names. Their ears are pierced, when children, with large holes, in which they suspend the dried skin of the Too-ee or Albatross, or still more common, a shark's tooth, dipped at its base in sealing wax, and suspended by black ribbon. Their eyes are generally piercing; perhaps the dark tattoo throws them out, the eyes illumining the darkness which surrounds them. Their carriage is very erect, and their address divested of all embarrassment; they are rather too obtrusive.

Strangers having landed among them, at first to confer benefits and to trade, are received with smiles of welcome; more perhaps on account of future expectation than from other feeling. Their address is good: they extend the hand, melt their features into a smile, and incline their heads. I have witnessed among them, especially the elder chiefs, receptions as correct as any practised in the drawing-room. There is a general absence of beard among them, arising in part from the tattoo, and in part to their employing their leisure to pluck the hairs out by the root; I do not say they are without beards, but they are not common – nor whiskers. The women are pleasing and of regular features – not generally pretty. They wear their hair loose, or tied into a nob (for that describes it best) on the back of the head; it is generally with men and women oiled with a fish oil prepared by themselves, particularly on dress occasions, when they porcupine it with white feathers: the hair does not grow so long as with our own countrywomen. Some heads I have seen, have been surmounted by a coarse hair, of a dark flaxen hue, untameably projecting in all directions, looking Medusa-like in form, and mop-like in colour. Their countenances owe their attractions to the mirthfulness of their ees. Their ears are pierced as the men's, and similarly adorned. Their lips are disfigured by the lines of the tattoo, giving them a bluish tinge. The tattoo on women is confined to the lips, temples,

forehead, legs, and hands. They are generally merry and joyous.

The children, formerly always naked, now with some cotton dresses clothed, are light-hearted, careless, gay, and well-formed; not like Europeans, rosy cheek – inquisitive, but not saucy. Morning, noon, and night, their naked forms dance about in their mimic play – apt modellers, they sit down, and with reeds imitate your building; or go to the flax-bush, and in a moment rig out of the leaves, hull and all, a schooner, brig, or barque.

The men go to war and the council, and build the houses or canoes; all other employments are common to men, women, and children, who are educated by observance of their parents and elders – even the youngest are carried to the field, slung on the back of either parent. The dress of the men consisted formerly of a mat, about the size and shape of a table-cover, which they wore suspended over the shoulder. This mat was made of flax, coarse or fine, according to the time given to its working. The women wore the mat also, but more commonly a short petticoat suspended by a brace across one shoulder: in wet weather they cover themselves with large tippets, in which strips of bark are worked, and, placed like the slates in a roof over one another, dependent, to carry off the water.

In war time, to make themselves, savage-like, as hideous as possible, they burn an earth forming a red

pigment, with which they bedaub themselves. They use it whenever they have work requiring active exertion; at which time they generally strip and work naked. The women use it also when working, and I always considered that it was used as a defence from the Gna-moo, or mud-fly. Captain Fitzroy, in the second volume of his narrative, gives a faithful drawing of an old chief and his wives dressed and armed as of old – nothing can be more correct.

These descendants of Shem (if Shem it be) have existed here beyond man's memory. Tradition, as is customary to hear, among the savages of the Pacific islands, represents that originally they came from realms afar, settling down on the various lands on which they might have been blown; and, after awhile, as they increased, families became divided by the collision of passions incidental to savage humanity; hence arose a division into tribes, residing in separate districts, the limits of which had their land-marks, known, or pretended to be known, to the respective tribes to whose residence they were assigned. Individual offences led to general irritation, and feuds between tribes became more separating than the land-marks that bound their territories. The blow struck, led to the retaliation; and the ire of two to the battle of many; one conquest wetted their appetites for more, until at various times the whole tribes of the islands, when a war broke out, became more or less engaged, At this early period,

their diet was confined to roots, and fruits (which are very scanty), insects, vermin, and fish. Whatever might have induced to cannibalism, may only be imagined; perhaps some fishers, blown out to sea, resorting to an expediency to which our own mariners in distress, maddened by hunger, are apt to turn, might have sated thirst, and eased craving appetites, at the expense of some companion; and, saved from the sea, might have re-landed, to introduce, when food was scarce and an enemy struck down, that food which accident had tasted. So prone were they of old to contention, that their residences were on the steepest mountains, such as nature had fortified. They dug out terraces from the bottom to the top, surrounding each with a high and stout timber fence, which had either to be reduced by starvation, or carried by assault; and as every tribe had its own pah, the pah being carried, extinguished the tribe; the survivors being turned into food, and their children reared as slaves. These sieges might have led to human beings repasting on human food: a sortie, led by hunger, might obtain a dead or living body, and the finger in the blood might have introduced the flesh between the teeth.

These hill settlements are now abandoned; the conveniences of trade were embarrassed by such locations. The European brought his wares to the water side – to the base of these mountains, and thither, in time, the Mow-rees descended; pahs now

being generally seated on flats, on the banks of rivers near the sea, or upon the coast, from which the high, or hill pahs were never distant; most probably to be near fishing grounds. Cook, the first expositor of the Mow-rees, found them in their hill pahs: the; black ruins of which are observable throughout the Country – mementos of the savage past.

He who returns from sojourning among wild tribes may walk the thronged thoroughfares of the metropolis, and smile to think on the unclad ancestors of the masses moving around him; especially if his fancy converts the woollen covering into the darker skin of the heathen race, changing the umbrella or stick into a spear; and woman, too, not as with us, looking independent and cared for, but following in silence (antique), and with her infant slung at her back, the track of some one who might for a time yield to her his protection. Such are the effects of civilization. I would say to the Australian labourer, such should be among the effects of civilization; to render comforts from the virtues only of women, as well as utility from a sheep's back; the juxta-position not being intended to offend, but to urge on the effort unto good.

In thinking with just horror on a cannibal, and as a cannibal on the New Zealander, we should remember the days before Augustine preached, when the Druidical sacrifices were upheld by the ladies of Britain; when Boadicea leapt into the chariot, and

lashed, not with whip in hand, her ponies round a turning, but goaded her rude beasts against hostile ranks, and over prostrate and bleeding enemies. As the foreign bands, and the daring preachers of those days, turned the darkness of heathenism into light, so, modelling with a rude clay, that nation on whose lands the sun has ceased to set, will our missionaries, and our commerce, rolling on the waves of time, redeem the savage of the Pacific, whose cannibalism we abhor; add one to the list of nations; and, above all, restore His creations, driven thus afar, to the Creator, brought nearer to them. Captain Cook, in 1769, took pleasure in noticing the fine frames and daring courage of these mountain, savages; his eye glanced over the neatness of their cultivated grounds with delight; their canoes and implements indicated to him talent and industry; and in that day, at least next to the Society islanders, they were as near to civilized man as savages could be. Then, their culture was effected by implements of hard wood, and stones, and shells, shaped by friction; now our grubbing hoe and spade, our hammer and chisels, are made use of; the war club, spear, and the patoo-patoo are all laid by as toys for the young, and the English musket is taken to decide the strife. Their form of society is simple; there would appear only to be two ranks, gentry and commonalty; the former called rargateera, the latter eewee. The eewee I fancy to have originated in the slaves who were cap-

tured in war, when children, and reared with and in the same manner as their own; although compelling their services, they allotted them no property, and their lives were held at the pleasure of their captor; tenants-at-will of their own bodies! But the eewee, appearing to yield respect to the rangateera, and at times labouring for them, are, to an extent, their own masters; can accumulate property, which, combined with daring or talent, seems to raise them, at least, now-a-days, in rank. There is another rank, the a-ree-kee, or head chief; it would seem a creation of emergency, decided or occasioned by some evident talent, and the respect descending to the children of the a-ree-kee, according to their abilities to maintain the father's rank, the respect for the memory of the parent, shown even to the daughter, who may, when there are no sons, be almost regarded as chief. Where I was, for a time, forced to reside, a man who had escaped to his family from slavery, led an attack on an English schooner, which had been driven by stress of weather into the harbour of O-po-tee-kee, and afterwards he was regarded as a chief. Property in land is held in common, for although families claim their portions, no sale takes place without reference to the tribe to which the family pertains: and of late years ramifications of families have so extended among different tribes, that many consents had to be procured before the purchase was completed. Property is general in a family: the coat on papa's back

to-day may irreverently be assumed by the son tomorrow; even the slave thinks nothing of donning the garments given him by the chief to carry.

The visits of Cook, in what must have appeared to them wooden mountains sailing on the deep, and of after navigators, and more recently of whaling vessels, altered many of the habits of these people. Their original state was one of constant insecurity; stranger met not stranger and to be certain of life; suspicion was always a characteristic, and covetousness, which arises from poverty and ignorance (when the latter feeling arises to an educated being, it is to be accounted for by the thoughts being concentrated on self; the same reason may hold with the savage), also marked, and marks still, the Mow-ree; children, savages, and monkeys, are imitative animals; that which most engages the attention will most occupy the thoughts, and produce the desire of possession; habits differing to their own were observed by the Mow-ree, and, if not causing him too much of trouble, adopted by him. The possession of novelties must have originated their thieving propensities, as they do not thieve among themselves, only of strangers. Desire is always too strong when there is no control of education to counteract it. To desire possession follows, in the savage mind, on the sight; the appropriation of property of parties with whom they have been contending, is as common to civilized nations as to themselves. When a Mow-ree wishes

for a thing, he will endeavour to obtain it by barter, and then if he cannot possess it, will direct his people to steal it. In the present day, a resident on lands bought of a tribe, is safe from the predations of that tribe, except some petty larceny of a slave: a rare deed, and for which the culprit must fly, if suspected.

The change of food, consequent on Cook's visit, induced them to welcome ships, particularly when they found they could exchange the produce of their culture for tools and garments; for some time and till very lately, some desire too strong to be restrained, induced them to outrages, to massacring the crews, and stealing the cargoes of ships. The chastisement given by different men-of-war made them fearful, and those outrages declined in frequency. Others of which they have been guilty, have been occasioned by attempts made by white men upon their wives, or by the acts of maddened drunkards. Increased intercourse with shipping, the dread of losing conveniences of trade, and the increasing respect for the missionaries, all aided in softening down the savage – his prejudices were melting away – his conception of the Deity, from an ill-defined spirit he called the Ar-too-ah, was affected by the doctrines poured into his ear by the missionaries – he lost faith in the wooden symbols, and handed them over to the care of his old women, who still, in a remote district, on receiving a visit of ceremony, expose on a board, dressed out with white and black feathers, their

wooden penates. Their cannibalism gave way to a change of food, to the aversion of missionaries, and Europeans generally, as well as to a want of victims; for unless he resorted to a slave, as he did occasionally, particularly if one happened to be killed by him in a moment of anger, the infrequent opportunity of a repast, obliged the native to think less of the food. The introduction of the musket has rendered their fights less destructive to life, and to one witnessing their encounters now, they would appear a cowardly race. They will begin firing directly an enemy is espied, even at a distance of two miles; and more execution is done by random shots, than by direct aim; fear of the weapon, handed down to them from its first startling effects upon them, and ignorance of its range, make them bad marksmen: the side having most powder will decidedly carry the day. Now the stranger could only be convinced of their spirit, by witnessing one party coming unawares on another, when their conflicts are most desperate. If events caused war, I fear a tendency to cannibalism still holds. The chief with whom I resided informed me last July twelve-month (1840), that a chief of a tribe, who had been at feud with an adjoining tribe before the days of their great grandfathers, had in the preceding month visited the hostile pah, as a herald to negotiate a peace; his mind was bent to that purpose by the missionaries, of whom he was a staunch disciple; he carried a symbol of truce. On entering.

the settlement, he sought some of the families who were related to him; he was welcomed, food placed before him, and while he was yet eating, a small axe cleft his skull, aimed from behind, nor was it long before he was quartered, baked, and devoured: this base act relit the fire, and when I left the country, vengeance to extirpation was vowed. The offending tribe, residing on the east coast, in the Bay of Plenty, at a pah called Muck-at-too, in times of peace furnishing more flax than elsewhere, bear a wild and ferocious character. About four year's ago they murdered a trader, employed by a merchant in Sydney, a deed considered daring by the natives; and afterwards, a vessel belonging to the same merchant, becalmed off the mouth of the river leading to their pah, was boarded by them; a cask of tobacco was demanded and paid as ransom. It is not too late for the government to resent these deeds, especially if their bellicose propensities continue. When the musket was first introduced, the first possessors were a tribe of the Bay of Islands, the Na-poo-ee; and these scoundrels, immediately they had collected ammunition, manned three or four canoes, and paid devastating visits all along the east coast, causing sad havoc, like sportsmen at a battue, every where they excited terror, and to this day in those districts a terror attend their name.

On the first rumours of war the missionaries generally interfere, act as mediators, and destroy the ground of contention. The efforts of missionaries

have also promoted intercourse between tribes – -reading and writing is now general amongst them, and it is propagated not only by missionaries themselves, but also by natives educated at the chief stations; they are very eager for these acquirements, and proud to expose them; when they have means of writing, they are always corresponding with distant friends. The original white man, Par-kee-ah, as they call him, having been English, and their chief commerce carried on with us and Americans, they more generally understand our language than they do that of any other country. They call the French Wee-wee, and are not inclined to them; as in their eyes much trade gives respectability of character, so does the quantity of trade derived from her, give to our country a preponderance in their regard; and this tends to the safety of English residents.

They have a priest (the A-ree-kee is frequently the priest) who performs religious ceremonies, and pronounces auguries on the setting out of an expedition. Their ideas of the Divinity represent him more inclined to torment them, than to bless; hence they fear, while, as it appears to me, the craft of the priests has so clothed their Ar-too-ah with mystery, as to render him incomprehensible to any ideas; evincing at times great respect for the imaginary being, by avoidance of what the priest, or their old men's tales, state as offensive to him. I was summoned to see a chief, I found him labouring under rheumatic fever –

I adopted such treatment as the case required, and pointed out to him the danger of lying on the ground; being a clay soil it was still more hurtful to him. Failing to induce him to be raised off the ground, I was obliged to decline continuing my medicine. The priest, who is the physician, skilled in the future more than the present, now stepped in, and said, the chief was troubled with the Ar-too-ah, and that he, the priest, would some day remove him; I reasoned with the patient to no purpose. A day after a loud shout from a dense crowd, attested some portentous event, and high above their heads was held by the priest, the dreaded Ar-too-ah – a rotten stick! which the crafty scoundrel proclaimed that he had removed from the body of the sufferer. I exposed the trick – the malady increased – the stick was reverently buried, and the chief followed. This same priest had come into collision with me once before; a chief of the Na-poo-ees, on a visit to this tribe, was taken ill. It is their custom, when a person is taken ill, to remove him from the settlement or town, and take him to the open grounds, where a roof is built over him, and he lies, with little shelter from the weather, under a mere shed. The Na-poo-ee had a very bad character among the English. I had offended him by allusions I had made to his frauds; he was some days on the ground, under the care and advice of the priest above alluded to. His home being at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, he had experienced medical treatment, and, dissatisfied with the relief

afforded him by the priest, became urgent for me to see him; I found him lying on a mat on the earth, and four sticks supporting a rude roof of segs over him, from which a blanket trailed down, under the lee of which his head was laid; by his side sat the priest, and at some little distance relatives and friends, either in attendance on him, or visitors, squatting on their heels, their chief envelope being a blanket, some being prodigal enough, evidently from ostentation, to fold two about them. Short pipes were smoking between their lips, and I was received in silence, all waiting my movements; the priest rose, and I felt the sick man's pulse. He was affected with the influenza. "Well, Mo-kar," said I, they say in my country there is no fool like an old one; knowing well enough that sick people should keep in-doors, to please the ways of these friends of yours, who you consider very ignorant, you come out here to lie down; the spirit of your illness delights to be near the wet earth, and soon he will drag you into it."

I gave him a powder on the blade of my knife, which he took. I held out my hand to take my knife back again, when the priest seized and refused it, because, he said, the sick man had been ta-boo-ed i.e. rendered sacred. I was put out of temper, and derided him, asking him if he had ever seen a white man bewitch (mar-koo-too), knowing they had an idea that some persons have the power of bewitching,

similar to the old supersition of the evil eye. He then took a sweet potato out of the hand of the sick chief, divided it with my knife, and returned the knife to me, saying that he had taken off the tar-poo. I then reasoned with the sick on his folly in submitting to customs he knew to be childish, and which would certainly shorten his life. I enjoined him to return to the settlement and keep in-doors, where I would see him again. The priest said he must not offend the Ar-too-ah. "Very well," I said, "please yourselves; stay here and die. I may not offend my God by allowing that you have any Ar-too-ah." Obstinacy held out one night; but the second day saw the old chief carried to the pah, where I attended him, and he got well. Now this old rascal, somewhere about forty years old, had been a subscriber to the church mission doctrines; when his reverence, the vicar apostolic of the islands of the Western Pacific, settled down in the Bay of Islands, to form a Catholic mission establishment, new faces, and the expectation of gain, attracted this fox to his reverence's chapel, where he was reconverted, and within twelve months from such last conversion, we find him in a distant pah submitting to obligations of his ancient superstition, at the very time too that he had visited these tribes commissioned to herald the advent of the Catholic vicar among them; denoting how little impression religion had made upon his mind. Single

cases would be immaterial, were it not that families are guided by the opinions of the senior; as he is, so will they be found, more or less.

The above chief, Mo-kar, was son of the oldest chief in the Bay of Islands, one of the first scenes of missionary enterprises. The fellow is a sad roue; and addicted to the fire-water, i. e. grog (why-perrah). Invariably, if a native takes to that, he proves good for nothing, and more deceitful than he would be by nature.

Their government was, and is now more, irregular, effected by rules laid down as occasions demanded, emanating from a council of the whole body of gentry; the voice of anyone noted for his deeds, or for his father's deeds, being most attended to. The aree-kee was the organ of their decisions relating to war or trade, although the latter might occasionally be guided by others of less note; and at present too frequently – women and slaves had no voice in the council, though doubtless in the privacy of home, the woman's wishes often formed the opinion and course of the council. When a council is held (which is, whenever any event more than common occurs) they form a ring, all squatting on their heels, carefully excluding from their features the inward thought; their mantles enveloping them, and some half covering their noses with them. Some one rises, and enters the ring, if excited, dropping his vestments, he then walks to and fro in a straight line, and

suddenly delivers himself; sometimes speaking one way and walking back in silence, sometimes speaking to and fro, using gestures more or less impassioned according to his excitement. When all have spoken, there is no taking of votes; the speeches have rendered apparent the opinion of the majority, and that is followed. In war, the aree-kee often dictates his own plans, and they are then implicitly obeyed. Now the influence of the one is declining, and will soon be utterly lost,

When needed, to prevent any place being visited or anything being touched by the tribe, the priest or aree-kee pronounces some form of prayer, and erects some sign whereby the thing or place is held sacred, styled "ta-poad" or "ta-boed;" and they would be reverently avoided. When erecting a building of any importance, a certain part of the ground and the workmen are taboed to women, so that women dare not go there. The head of the chief is frequently taboed; their dead, and the burial places. I had been a long and wearying journey, over mountains, through forests, and through rivers, and had reached a river communicating with the Bay of Islands, where a boat had been ordered to meet me. Tired and hungry, and cold in our damp clothes, my companions and self directed the sailors to make a fire; the place where we were had evidently been taboed in by-gone days. Several timbers that originally belonged to war canoes were stuck in the

earth; we were at first too tired to take much notice; a crackling fire soon dried our clothes; and potatoes were roasting, and salt pork boiling for our suppers, while the moon was glittering above us. The sailors were busy tending on our wants, and our guides crouching in their mats were silently observing our movements, and I did not doubt as ready for the fodder as ourselves. One of them came to where I was lying, and pointing to the fire, said, "No good that!" – "Why?" I looked and saw fragments of the canoe blazing mid the rest. This appeared to be sacred to the manes of a mighty warrior of old, whose memory was revered; and we were carelessly defiling the sacred spot, and offending the ar-too-ah by converting the canoe relics into fuel. I directed the men to pull out the unconsumed parts, and restore them to their places. One and all exclaimed against me; there was no other fuel to be had; supper was nearly done, and we had a long sail before us; it was too tempting; the look of the cracking skins of the potatoes overcome the wish to respect old customs, when an Irish sailor cried out, "Well, Doctor, cannot you tell 'em we're waking the old gentleman? It's a dacency too grate for the likes of them! Sure it ought to plase 'em!" I persuaded the guides, who were well used to sailors, that it was a way they had in some countries of honouring the dead; but all my tales failed with an old chief; he crouched down, and declined to partake of the food cooked with such fuel,

although he must have been hard pressed with hunger; as it was, he tightened the belt round his waist, and coolly looked on at our supper.

Their music is very rough; their ideas of harmony very spare; and their melody little or none. Formerly they had a rude flute, now laid aside; our music makes but slight impression upon them; they have monotonous tunes, which they chaunt, with chorusses, using one or two notes with a gradual crescendo, in their canoes as they paddle along, or going on an expedition of war or ceremony. Some of their chorusses are most frightful and discordant; notwithstanding the long intercourse that has subsisted with us and serving on board of our merchantmen, you never hear them attempt a song or mock a tune they may have heard. Their amusements are, on occasions of ceremony, the war-dance, a mimic of their fights, and games played with their hands, not understood nor interesting to behold. Their mode of swearing is peculiar, having reference to their horrid cannibalism; their expletives are, "Go and cook your head" – "I will roast your brains" – and such like, which give deadly offence to utter; not, perhaps, so much now-a-days as they used to do. I overheard a quarrel between an old chief of one tribe, and the daughter of a chief of another tribe; the chief angered, rattled his nails on his teeth, saying "Do you not see these? they ate your uncle, and tasted your father's brains, and they'll finish you yet." – The woman

danced again with ire too furious to permit her to reply; but down she sat and wrote off to her tribe to tell of the insult to herself, and memory of her relatives. In a short time came back a note of defiance to the old chief, bidding him prepare, that the tribe were then contending with another, and that war over, they would quarter him amongst them; they were then getting ready ovens for him and his people, of whom they would not leave a child to tell where his race had lived. Old women and priests are believed to have a power of casting evil on those who offend them, even unto death; and a Mow-ree, thinking himself bewitched, will take to his mat, and not rise again alive. I knew an Englishman, who consorted with a Mow-ree woman, and had a family by her, who had lived some years among the natives, had so far adopted their ideas and habits, as to die under the impression of being bewitched. Here we have a picture of the savage uncivilizing; in fact, however, it shows that those we call savages are no worse than our own uneducated vulgar, who are as prone to adopt customs, however bad, as the savage they pity and despise. The workings of the passions, under all climes, evidence one system and one Hand. The old traders settled about the country, however bad themselves, hold the Mow-ree in contempt; although, when exposed to the same education, the Mow-ree is their equal in every art or trade he puts his hand to, more than his equal in the command of his passions

– frequently listening to the abuse levelled at him, without even reminding his abuser of the drunkenness that excites the expressions. The girls are permitted to indulge in prostitution, so that their family receives a benefit. When contracted to any one, then as a wife, fidelity is exacted, and was formerly preserved by fear of death, which often resulted on a departure from it; if a wife is discovered to be faithless, the paramour is immediately stripped by the husband's friends of all his property, whatsoever it may be, nor dare he lift his hand to return a blow; formerly both parties suffered death, especially if slaves: influence, as with us, often shelters an offender.

The extreme prostitution practised, and every where connived at, originated in the profits of the transaction, sailors being lavish in their gifts to the objects of their temporary affections, from which the whole family benefit. The father, directing his daughter's thoughts to the vice as a means of gain, divests them of faithfulness, ever after falling into temptations. Pride and fear restrain the wives of the chiefs, but they are frail defences when modesty is removed, and there is no principle. The Mow-ree woman is naturally very modest; indeed there are few in any country, but irreclaimable savages, who are otherwise; and you will rarely see amongst them an equal to the common tramps of our by-streets. The arch knave Mokar, of the Bay of Islands, of whom I have before written as being ill, makes an annual voyage

from the Bay to the East coast to his wife's relatives, where he induces his friends' daughters, by many plausable tales to attract them, to accompany him back; and when there, induces them to prostitute themselves to the seamen, sharing the profits with them; of this kind many tales may be told. The missionaries direct their efforts to stay all this, and produce better principles; not, however, with much success, as compared with the duration of their labours. One result of this almost promiscuous intercourse is, that the native is slow to take unto himself a wife, although they generally have, except the mission natives, and even the majority of them possess, more than one wife, the chiefs keeping their different wives in different houses, residing with either as their fancy pleases. Large families of children are very, very rare. I suspect barrenness to result from the vice being early practised, now with themselves, as well as our own people; and to be one, if not a principal, reason of the decline in their numbers. Syphilis, too, has been long introduced amongst them: it is singular to observe, considering how long it has been introduced, the few deformities arising from it; when first affected, they separate themselves from all, and retire into the bush (or wilds), where they use herb fumigations, returning only when well.

As parents they are to be praised, especially the father, who is as a mother to his young, carrying with equal tenderness, and humouring with equal patience,

the waywardness of childhood – that beauty of life, afforded by women among ourselves, whence spring the many attractions of home; they render respect to parents and their seniors generally. Their occupations are building, fishing, cultivating, rearing their pigs, and trading; their leisure, which they take all pains to add to, is employed in visits to friends, making and repairing clothes, and narrations of events; they are much given to reading; the press of the church missionaries has given to them spelling-books, and portions of the New Testament; and if the Bible history could be detailed to them in familiar tales, selected from it in chronological order, they would derive great benefit, having retentive memories, and reasoning on every novelty; those who subscribe to the Church and Wesleyan missionaries, amounting to nearly half their whole number, are observant of every rule dictated to them, abstaining from working and even travelling on a Sunday, putting on their best suits, and attending the performance of the service. They are, however, no more honest in their general transactions than the rest, which, as religion is defective without works, denotes that they have attained only one step as yet in the acquisition of its truths; the slight hold it has of them is frequently attested by their aberrations under common temptations. The vicar apostolic settled down among them, and, before he could have attained their language, he made converts, of whom most had subscribed to the Church missionaries.

The obligations of custom and convenience will be found stronger with them than those of principle; a resident possessing great trade has an equal local influence with the missionary. Commerce has introduced tobacco, and it has become indispensable to them; from their earliest childhood, men and women smoke; they are as critical with their pipes as a sportsman with his gun. Pipes and tobacco are absolutely indispensable as articles of barter with them.

Their buildings consist of warrys or houses for themselves, platforms raised on lofty poles for their provisions and corn, and mud houses to store their roots in. The warry is low, the eaves of the roof projecting over the entrance, so as to form an alcove, where repose inay be taken in summer. The ground being nicely levelled, slabs of timber, hewn out of drift wood, are inserted at intervals along the sides, their height (not generally permitting the inmates to stand upright) and size being in accordance with the pride or importance of the resident; on the tops of these, they tie, with green flax, their wall plates, on which they erect the timber of the roof; between these slabs the intervals are filled up with bundles of dried segs, and on them they attach perpendicularly and singly, reeds, like in size and colour to cane, close to each other. These reeds they sometimes partially cover, and then expose them to the action of flame (variegating them with a black line twisting up them), so as to produce a pleasing effect to the eye.

The ridge pole is variously carved, having on one end a huge face cut out, and they decorate it with feathers. This they term the owner's ar-too-ah. The entrance is from the alcove in front, where they have to creep through a slide door to enter; a single small hole in the same part, with a wooden door, serves for a window. The interior is divided into three parts; lengthways on either side an edging of timber is inserted into the ground, within which are the sleeping mats; in the centre is a slight depression paved with stone, where, in winter, they burn small dead twigs, to save a smoke; the door posts, windows, and gables of roof are all more or less carved; their figures are very hideous, grotesque, and indelicate. The warry, raised platform, and store-house, with a small extent of ground, as a sort of court, form a location; round which they place a low wood fence. A settlement, or pah, consists of many of these locations; the whole being surrounded by a high fence, of irregular height, formed of trees and timber drifted by the floods, some pieces twenty foot or more high, and their tops, here and there, carved into faces and forms similar to those on their warrys: the tongue projecting through enormous lips, far over the breast, is a frequent figure. The entrance to the pah is at various parts, by means of stiles, guarded by projecting timbers, which, if not heeded, catch the head and send you backwards. Their means of transport are tee-whys, for journeys near home, and

war-kars for sea, and both, for fishing. The tee-why varies in size, and will contain from three to twenty in a line; they are formed of single trees, with the middles chipped out by adzes; they are guided and impelled by one sitting aft, right in the stern, by means of a paddle, which they call o-e-o-e. Their war-kars are large tee-whys, on which are fastened, with flax-ties, side-boards, one on each side; the form of the outside tapers to the stem, which is carved inside and out, and stern, also carved at its base; from the stern a flat narrow board projects upwards, and on the stem is attached a carved unnatural face, with the pearl of shells for eyes, and the unsightly tongue as above alluded to; the joining of the top sides with the bottom is covered by a small beading of wood; wicker work is laid down near the bottom, to stand on, and cross pieces of wood run from one top side to the other; the whole is daubed over with their red pigment, and on occasions of ceremony dressed out with black feathers. They are to Europeans unwieldy, and apt to capsize, but in the hands of natives move as safe as a boat, and with great speed. Those used for war, of which few are now to be seen, were manned by about a hundred. I have seen one with sixty men in her. Some of the native women brought up at mission stations are handy with their needles, and house-work generally; and the lads about settlements can row, steer, or sail a boat, dig the ground, and cook food, &c. &c, as

well as Europeans. From the assistance to Euro-peans, and the little pay given them, great profit has been obtained. Now their whims, and the caprices and interests of chiefs and others having control over them, render them too uncertain to be depended on. Native labour generally is uncertain: if a party contracted with, hears of another having received higher pay for a contract similar to his own, he is apt to throw up his work in the midst of it, to exact more payment; also, higher bribes will take him from your employ; so that the settler can in no way depend on native labour, as it is at present; perhaps much time will not elapse before it alters for the better. When work is required to be done, which natives can perform, the job should be contracted for between the settler and some chief, selecting the chief to whom the land the settler occupies may have originally pertained; the payment arranged, and the work well understood by the Mow-ree, time must be specified for, and the payment made only on completion of the job; some little present, perhaps, may be necessary to the chief at the onset; they always demand in excess: the value of the work can only be ascertained by a reference to the nearest old settler, as every place has its prices; their most usual way of measuring is by extending both arms, which is their fathom. The familiarity of the native is excessive, and very burthensome to new comers, who, either from fear or ignorance, are apt

to permit it; a man is scarcely arrived before, one after the other, they throng around him; if you are remote from settlements, they enter your house sans ceremonie, squat on your tables, and haul everything over; this is a great nuisance; frequently done to effect a fraud: from the first you must set yourself against it, keeping them without the enclosure, only permitting some one known to have importance to enter your house; resistance should be made in the firmest, at the same time most jocular, manner you can adopt. There is another objection to the natives thronging about your domicile, that is the vermin that infests them; they are generally clean in their skins as far as their habits of living allow; it is customary to see the head of a burly fellow in his wife's lap, and she, despite the delicacy of her sex, sedulously hunting his head over, and when found, nothing is wasted, but appropriated for the hunter's particular enjoyment.

Capt. Fitzroy says (Vol. I. p. 601), "In walking about the missionary establishment at Pai-hia, I was disappointed by seeing the natives so dirty, and their huts looking little better than pigsties. Immediately round the dwellings of the missionaries, I expected a better state of things; but I was told, that their numerous and increasing avocations engrossed all their time, and that the native population were slow in adopting habits or even ideas of cleanliness."

The native is very bombastic in his descriptions and tales to strangers; all his accounts must be re-

ceived with caution, and be confirmed before they are acted on. Rumours of wars, thefts, and bloodshed, are often poured into the settler's ear, which the narrator has added to some simple occurrence that may have become known to him. With the old settler, the native drops these practices; he is too familiar even with him, and this arises in part from the custom of entering freely one another's cabins – habits of hospitality to strangers; partly also from a consciousness that their protection is necessary to the settler. Trade has aroused their judgment, and their opinions of our wares are as correct as our own almost with respect to fowling-pieces.

The intending emigrant will not forget that commerce and residence in Sydney has given to the native an intelligence, a desire for our clothing and conveniences, and also a knowledge of the frauds of trade, he might not otherwise have expected him to possess. That he can be sensible of good intentions towards him, and of good done for him, yet without any deep feeling of gratitude, which perhaps we should look for. Frauds detected in our traders from the day when gunpowder was sold for seed, and which they carefully sowed, and tended, waiting the appearance of the plant, down to the present tricks practised in qualities of goods, keep up his natural suspiciousness of us; but although convinced that the Mow-ree relies on his integrity, the settler may never place reliance on him. The seeing our people

swilling themselves with grog, and serving on board of ships in the harbours, has induced them to taste, and when once they have been excited by it, sobriety is at an end. The being is vitiated; he will hesitate at no means to procure liquor. Where the larger number of settlers and ships congregate, there chiefly has this habit been introduced; there the missionary is generally not resident, that is amongst numbers, and his labours do not, as elsewhere, counteract the evil. At Ko-ro-ra ri-ka, where, within the last five years, the Catholic Mission has been established (I do not mean since that establishment, the priests denouncing the habit), there this vile debasing practice obtains, drowns thought and feeling, and prevents the formation of any mind. His reverence sees the evil as well as others; and it is to be hoped that his labours, as well as those of the Church of England Mission, will direct the artillery of good words and works against it; that the soul and existence of the savage may not be carried away by the "fire-water" of the civilized community. As this inclination extends, so will bad habits amongst the Mow-rees; and as idleness generally follows its use, the want of means will drive him to crime, I have known several slaves and followers of the Na-poo-ee chief Mo-kar, the arch drunkard on that beach, abscond from places where they were employed with their employer's goods. Even life will not be safe among beings so demoralized as they will be, if this

habit extends. To this only will be owing any danger to a settler amongst them. Although their numbers render them important, their interests divide them; and it is very possible to subdue a tribe disposed to outrage by means of another. The injury resulting to their trade will act on them to prevent any general outbreak against us.

One morning an uncouth chief called on me when I was residing in the Bay of Islands, accompanied with many followers; I purchased what he had for sale; and being related to a chief who was a friend of mine, I gave him and his troop some food. When they had ended their repast, they departed; the chief remained chatting with me. I was told some plates were missed. I pretended great astonishment. "What," I said, "friend, is it your custom to take his dishes when your friend gives you food?" The old chief's lip quivered, he hesitated a moment, then threw off his clothes, and ran after his people; speedily he returned with a man bearing the lost plates, who was desired to relate how the chief had basted the culprit. He asked me if I was satisfied; I asked him to smoke his pipe, and we parted good friends. The same party, some days before, had broke into the house of a French settler, situated remote from a settlement, tied the owner's hands and legs, and rifled his house. A representation being made to the principal chief, restitution and compensation was rendered. The Frenchman was too un-

easy to remain; he sold his land and departed; and his place was occupied by an Englishman and his wife, without their suffering any molestation.

Another outrage was committed last year by a lad belonging to the before-mentioned Mokar on an English superintendent of a farm in the Bay of Islands. The lad was walking behind the man, knocked him to the ground, murdered him, and rifled his pockets. The murderer was captured through the instrumentality of the natives, and lodged in the gaol at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka. The chiefs there resident demanded him in a tumultuous manner, as they said, to execute him. The military, of whom they stand in great dread, were sent for; on whose appearance quiet was restored, without even explanation. The murderer afterwards escaped from gaol, but was again caught and re-secured there. A great error was committed (if the Government heard, as was stated, that the culprit acknowledged the deed to his countrymen), in failing to hang him at once; it was necessary to the general safety; and keeping him to await the arrival of a judge, was an observance of forms not needed, and perilous to the general safety. Notwithstanding these cases, and others happening since the arrival of the Governor, and the rumours of wars to the southward, of which accounts have been received by the New Zealand Land Company from their agents, dated May, in this year, life and property are as safe in New Zealand as in Ireland.

CHAPTER VI. EUROPEAN RESIDENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

EUROPEAN RESIDENTS.

Wherever the ocean has left a spot of land, if money can be made upon it, the British are certain to wend their way there; the north of the American continent has been peopled by them; India flourishes with thousands of her subjects; Africa is now chequered with her own and British population; and that quarter of the world which, of Europeans, she was first to tread, served her in one part, as a mixen where she could cast her refuse, hereafter to produce fertility; and in others furnished her with many spots, where she might turn her farthings into pounds. It will appear from past detail, that these brown masses had not many years heaved their volcanic heights in sight of our navigators, when one after another our countrymen annually perched upon them, to seek that which crime or poverty denied to them elsewhere: the victim released from the tempest; the convict escaped from the chain-gang and the noose; the daring preacher to open the holy book; the needy and runaway skipper sated with the sea and its many

perils; and the tradesman flitting from his obligations and prison walls in Sydney – all gradually came on the quest to New Zealand, where they had neither a creditor to fear, or a law to restrain them. The American, too, occasionally bolted from his ship; next the needy emigrant, to be early on a spot hereafter to be famous; then Frenchmen from Australia; and then Catholic piety sent its representatives to teach the true way to those on whom our Church's servants had so many years been waiting; not to have life and limb exposed, as the latter exposed theirs, for the good of him, ever ready to take and injure it, but to settle amidst many whom the restraints of Christianity and society affected so far, that the risk of life and privations through which the earlier missionaries had to struggle, were not, when the foot of the pious Catholic first pressed this distant land: the child dared first the wilds, the holy father followed on his cultivated track. The war shout of the cannibal greeted the one, and a hand made friendly by the efforts of that one, was extended to the other, to aid his footstep to the shore.

I allude not to difference of creeds, but ask the palm for those who won it; who were first to raise the banner, and lead to victory, – in that war with sin and ignorance which honours a community to wage, and for which the laurels of posterity may most justly be claimed, and to which they will be most willingly accorded. The sons of England (the island home

of piety and freedom) were first in the perilous struggle, and to them be the honour; be it for other creeds to aid the good intent, and maintain, Christianity by works: the Mow-ree may still exclaim

"Oh, that some power the gift wou'd gie us,
To see oursel's as ithers see us!"

To quibble about some fancied deficiency, and refuse the meed because of the imperfections of humanity (and where do they not appear?), may be suspected as emanating from the hypercriticism of the sceptic, of one who exercises not charity with his reason.

The first residences formed by our countrymen were not abodes of comfort; interest alone induced the Mow-ree to tolerate the European; he looked to him as a person who could trade better for him than he could for himself, and who could supply better than himself newly-created wants; whom he could, when nothing more could be gained, drive from him, or refer at leisure to his oven. I do not believe, however, there are many, if any, instances where the white man residing with the native, trading, who has been cooked; occasional stragglers from ships have met with that fate, yet white man's flesh has not often been laid in the Mow-ree's oven. Crews occasionally landed on various parts of the coast, for wood, water, and provisions; and, excited by the presence of woman (whom man ge-

nerally entices into error, and then leaves unsupported to its consequences), have committed horrible excesses, at which the mind revolts as much as at human banquets. For very many years the atrocities, when committed by the native, have been occasioned by the deeds of – proh pudor / – the civilized.

The character of the marine, either of our country or of America, does not deserve that meed of praise which has been given to it, if to be judged by the samples met with south of the Line. Ignorance, blasphemy, drunkenness, and reckless principles, characterize vast numbers of those who man our ships: especially the crews of whalers. It is a well-known fact, that seamen employed in that trade generally dislike for the master to take his wife with him on the voyage, feeling her presence as a check upon them: yet from such people have come those who were first to be met living with the Mow-rees, taking their daughters as wives; and, as competition increased, becoming owners of tracts of land, given or sold at a very low rate to them, by the natives. It would be well for commerce, if checking the excesses of its pursuers, settling differences at sea, and visiting to protect the natives of various islands, some well regulated marine police was established. The natives have been taught, by the occasional presence of men of war, that there was a power afloat with which they could not contend, and to whom any assault on the white man would be told. To a

degree, this dread gives protection to the white settler. The missionaries soon discovered the real character of those of their countrymen who resided in the scenes of their exertions – they pointed out their immorality and its dangers, exhorted them to shun drink, to adopt moral courses, giving them aid when sick or distressed, being witnesses to their land-deeds, and interposing between them and offended natives. Although secretly respecting them, and obliged to seek their occasional aid, those characters jeered at them, and affected to hold them in derision; often some vagabond has crossed their path, and redolent with the fumes of drink, has anathematized them. The resident chairman of the Church Mission has been often seen standing patiently trying to reason away error, while he was being compared to all that was odious, and wished all that was horrible; and he replying quietly, and forgiving the injury. When to these reckless characters were added traders having some little means, scenes of profligate revelry, to which natives were admitted, were too often enacted. This state of society was uncontrolled by women, an influence which, joined with, controls more than education itself; gradually, a more decent society grew on to this disreputable state. The Mission were compelled to point out errors of their countrymen to the notice of the Mow-ree, that he might not be misled by them. A chapel now appeared at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, where all Europeans

could attend the service of the church. Many cases of outrage and crime reached the New South Wales government, and ships of war were occasionally despatched to inspect the state of the community.

The whaling vessels resorting to the harbour now found it more convenient to deal with the white residents than the natives, and many cleared great profits by the trade; sending up to Sydney, by chance visitors trading from there, the cash and notes of the whalers, and having them returned in spirits, which increased their business, by enabling them to retail grog to crews allowed liberty on shore; frequently an American and English crew would meet on shore, and many serious frays were the consequence; and their excesses, which were unblushingly committed, were horrible to behold. – -I may not tell the tales. A resident for the British Crown was appointed, armed with no other power than that of communicating with the Sydney government; an American Consul was also appointed; the British resident's appointment was dated about 1833. Besides the sailors and other traders, persons whose names were afterwards published in the Sydney papers as bolters from their creditors, appeared; and opened inns, grog shops, and stores of miscellaneous trade. The community now consisted of three classes – members of the Mission and chief traders (persons formerly masters of merchantmen) in the first; catechists of the Mission, traders, small

store-keepers, in the second; sawyers, mechanics, and sailors, in the third.

The community was scattered about the principal seats of trade, the Bay of Islands, Ho-ki-an-ga, and the Thames; the majority being at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka in the Bay of Islands. Traders were also scattered about the coast; to the southward only whaling crews resorted in the season. The trade carried on by the residents, was in buying potatoes, timber, fire-wood, flax, pigs, from the natives; who exchanged them for cotton prints, clothes, guns, muskets, powder, shot, tobacco, blankets, chests, and other requirements; the residents also purchased oil and whalebone from the ships, French and American wares, and provisions; the latter nation sending out in her whaling ships cargoes of flour. This trade employed many small crafts to collect produce round the coast, as well as much shipping from the adjoining colonies. The residents had at the onset great troubles to undergo, the natives frequently annoyed them until the whites increased in numbers; they would not be kept out of the houses – they threatened life on the slightest pretext; demanding heavy payments for offences often imaginary. Even the Missionaries could not always ensure their labour, and were very often their own servants in every way – to cut and carry fuel and water, light fires, and cook the food, &c. Captain Fitzroy says, "On the 23d I went with Mr. Baker to Tipuna, the place where the first missionaries, Mr. King and Mr. Kendal,

established themselves in 1813. Mr. King was absent, but I saw his wife and son, who told me that he was travelling about among the natives, and would not return for several days; he was on horseback, his son said, but quite alone" (I have myself traversed districts where no Europeans lived, without injury and always receiving kindness, a Mow-ree boy my only companion, a stick my only arms.) "Mrs. King described the former state of things, which she had witnessed herself, in strong terms; she could not look back to those days without shuddering. Being told in the evening, 'that before morning their house would be in flames;' and that 'stones were heating for the oven in which they themselves were to be cooked; was a quieting farewell, from a mob of angry natives, on more than one occasion" Now, those days are gone: the savage is improved. In 1840, residing in a distant settlement, on the eastern coast, and only five Europeans within fifty miles, a strange native had insulted me. Those of the tribe on whose land I was for a time located, assembled about my house, and while I was out, entered, and about thirty of them were chattering together, all about the offence given to me; excited by what had occurred to me, I overheard an observation, made by a chief, who had perched himself on a capsized wheel-barrow, and taking his remark in an opposite sense to what he intended, I sprang at him, and seized him by the throat, to turn him out of the house. Shaking off my hasty attack, with only a slight

tremor appearing on his features, he asked, "Why was the anger of the white man to his friend?" I felt ashamed of my hastiness, and could not even persist in my demand for his absence. I explained the offence; they assured me of their friendship, deprecating my anger; I desired to be left alone, and, on the instant, not one was to be seen about the premises. There was never any demand made upon me for "Te-u-tu," i.e. compensation for my assault, as is their general custom when offended by the pah-kee-ah.

Immorality abounded; the legal offences, if so they could be called where no law existed, were few.

I may be permitted to narrate here, as singular, an event which occurred to me. The oldest resident at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, who, when I went first to the Bay of Islands, applied to me for advice, stating symptoms which threatened apoplexy; he had been a free liver, observing many colonial irregularities, and cohabited, as most of them do, with a Mow-ree woman, by whom he had several children. Of late years he had cast off many reprehensible habits, was fond of his children, and took a praiseworthy care of their education. The disorder of his body indicated to me danger, and I warned him to resort immediately to measures, and a course of life, to ward it off. It was not, he said, convenient to him to commence that day the treatment advised. I left him, enjoining him to send for some medicine. My residence was six miles from the

settlement. Some days after, I again visited Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, taking with me, as he had failed to send for them, such remedies as I intended him to use. The keel of my boat had scarce grated on the beach, when I espied the old man stumping along, for he was minus a leg, with features I may say moist with anxiety; "Doctor, have you forgot me?" – "No, you need some one to think for you," I replied, "after my admonition." I gave him his packet, and away he hobbled to his dinner, seemingly rejoicing. I had strolled a bare quarter of a mile from the spot, when a breathless messenger arrested my steps, to fetch me to the old man's house, where, as if asleep, he lay dead in his bed: nothing recalled life. Great was the contrast a few minutes presented, between the florid hue of health and the pallor of death. I had seen the former troubled with anxiety, forewarning ! I beheld the calmness of a sleeping babe. As I left the house, I was elbowed by a man, a resident for some years, with features swollen with drink, unable to stand steady on his legs. "How's the old boy, Doctor?" Dead, I said, looking him full in the face: if I had struck him he could hardly have staggered more, and then his bloated cheeks expressing alarm, as if the inward feeling at once enchained them, and their purple hue became so pale, I was glad to escape. Two months after, he himself, with companions, all drunk, were capsized at night in his boat, and all but

a Mow-ree boy, found in the morning astride the keel, entombed in the deep.

Such a community may present no extreme of crime. Wherever gain is made predominant, feeling is vitiated in man, modesty in woman; true religion in both. The outward show of the latter may be very glaring in observance of forms and affected interest, its semblance being required as much as civility of manner to reception and credit in society; looking for the proof of it in acts, you find them run counter to the professions of the tongue. At the outset, a society of such elements would find might to be right; and the weak naturally sought for protection. The influence of the missionaries afforded this; and to their eyes the conduct would be now and then fashioned to obtain what aid they might need, uninfluenced by the good doctrine they promulgated; whilst decency was aped, a common bond of sensual indulgence bound the whole.

It is to be regretted that the one object of pursuit is so evident throughout all society in our colonies south of the Line; it is a feature that distinguishes it from home. The selfishness it engenders is in painful contrast with the kindness of home. It is as though the rule was, "to get money, honestly, if they can, but to get it." Not that they are chargeable to that extent, although they induce the suspicion of being so. Such a state of a society precludes all

real comfort, except to those who can derive it from gain.

These are matters requiring to be well weighed by those in the colonies, and those at home desirous to promote emigration, as it causes to the newly landed such an oppression of disappointment as greatly to clog his incipient efforts; and he returns ten times more distressed than he set out, or writes to say how strange and sad he feels.

At first, few females were members of the society, and where there is little principle, the fewer the better, as they become contaminated and re-act adversely upon it; in time respectable families settled down remote from the main body, and not in communion with it; however, their presence elevated the mass.

The majority of the grog-sellers were far more heathen than the Mow-rees; they induced them to drink – beings, too ready to imitate whatever the white man is seen by them to do, they have promoted the prostitution of the women to the sailors in their own dens, as enticing the men to purchase their liquors and to expend the gain of arduous pursuits in the gratifications of a few days. Not prostitution only was encouraged, but there were white residents who concerted with the chiefs for them to direct their slaves in thievery, pointing out who would receive the booty, and pay for it.

The diet of the residents consisted of pork, and potatoes, tea, and sugar, and at times flour, rice, and

ship biscuit. The missionaries obtained greater variety from resources sent them from home and their own exertions, and sold their surplus produce to the settlers.

Another mode of gain to the settlers was native labour, for which from two to four shillings a day per head would be readily paid by ships while in harbour.

Individuals at home, whose piety first promoted missions to New Zealand, have been the chief means of presenting the native as he is, to those who now visit that country. Many of his superstitions, his ferocity, and antipathy to Europeans, have disappeared through their efforts. The missionaries sent out have not always been ordained ministers of the Church, but men of unimpeachable moral character, which they have done nothing to impair; an occasional black sheep has appeared – scouted from the flock as soon as the change of his wool was perceived. These servants of our church were of two grades, the clergyman for gospel ministration and general supervision, and the catechists, men of inferior education, but fitted for the duties of teaching and instructing in the arts of civilization as assigned to them. After their labours had continued for some time, natives, who had been their pupils, were delegated to various districts, where missionary labours were unknown, maintained there by the mission, and after a time removed; their places being supplied by missionaries sent to reside. At the homesteads of

the missionary, many of our arts and occupations were pursued; the natives encouraged to learn them, and shown that application would render to them all the par-kee-ah's comforts and superiorities.

By means of a press set up at the head station, portions of the New Testament were printed, and the books circulated among them; also spelling books; and they were taught to read and write, grammatical rules being laid down by the industry of the Mission. I should say that more than one-fourth of the native population can read and write their own language; and that they have a sense of moral obligations. Further I would not give them credit, as it is doubtful whether piety has entered the soul. How long a time may be necessary to alter the savage thought and attune it correctly! who shall say?

It is asked, whether the immense sums annually subscribed have been judiciously applied to futher the intentions of the subscribers? The good done and conduct of the missionaries is to me an answer; not conceiving that the subscribers would respond to the calls made on them, either in or out of the pulpit, without inspecting accounts so as to be satisfied of their intentions being properly carried out. The expenditure has already effected a chain of schools throughout the country; a work of no little time or trouble, as those who have witnessed to the ways of the more uncultivated natives can best tell.

Abroad, the missionaries are accused with having

endeavoured to appropriate the entire commerce with the natives. If so, they have unjustly interfered, and attended so much to secular pursuits, as to prevent them effecting all the good in their power. In confirmation of this their accusers say, that the chairman and others engage in commercial speculations, having, together with Mr. Clendon, the consul for America, a ship (the Toky-rau) engaged in whaling; and they point to the immense territorial possessions of the society, comprising a great part of the north, end of the island, and containing an immense acreage of kowry timber, the most valuable production. And it is also noticed that a very large annual supply of very superior articles of trade are sent out to them, with the society's mark on the packages; which merchandise is expended on their own interests, without reference to those duties they were sent out to perform.

In the first place, their accusers do not sustain out there the most perfect characters; in the second, the ministers say, we are here for life, and our children have grown here; may we not provide for them? We are in the receipt of salaries, why may we not apply them to our advantage? We have done the best we can for the native, while we have done well for ourselves; and we should have done more for him, but for the force of bad examples which you are too ready to show and to sanction. We are responsible for our trust on earth to the Society's committee, and we render our accounts to them.

They have been accused of pride and inhospitality. The former charge, perhaps, arising from some airs shown off by the catechists, which had been more charitably reported for their correction to the missionaries than laid at the door of the latter. The missionaries deny having given a low price for their land, and have rendered themselves obnoxious to several by preventing frauds being committed on the native. These matters are common talk out there; and are as well mentioned, for many reasons, especially that the new settler may not embarrass himself by entering into schisms.

The Wesleyans also delegated ministers to labour among the heathen, and were settled down at Wan-gar-o-a, whence the outrages of the natives obliged them to flee. Their chief station is at Ho-ki-an-ga, and about that neighbourhood; the members are not many, although their ministration is perfect. Some of them have given up their labours as missionaries, and taken to trade very extensively; (doubtless an error in any one who has once officiated as a minister of the gospel;) one of them engaging in large contracts for timber.

The Church Mission stations are, the principal at Py-hee-ah, opposite Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka; the Way-de-mattee, mid-way between there and Ho-ki-an-ga; at the Thames; Tow-ran-ga; Poverty Bay; and three or four to the northward; some also to the southward; all possess boats, and a schooner of fifty tons is at their direction, and in their pay.

The Catholic Mission is guided by a zealous and well informed superintendent, under the style of Vicar Apostolic of the Islands of the Western Pacific, settled at Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, where he performs mass. He has been very assiduous in his duties, and is very sanguine as to the result. With those Mow-rees, to whom he is known, he seems popular. He is a native of France, M. Pompaliere; the natives call him the Pi-ky-po, for what reason I know not; he also employs a schooner, and makes the circuit of the island. He has converted the oldest chief in the Bay of Islands, old Tarry-ha, his sons, and people, although previously attendants on the Church Mission. His reverence proceeds on one good principle, that of guarding the natives against selling all their land. He says, he has not been sent to trade, that he is no buyer of land, unless to assist natives who have been reckless of future wants. Of the actual result of his efforts no opinion can for some time be pronounced. When I embarked to inspect a country on the East coast, I was surprised to meet, on joining my ship, Mo-ka, Tarry-ah's son, with about thirty of his people, men, women, and children; during the passage, three times a day, their discordant voices were raised together, chaunting the mass, or some service of the Catholic faith. Moka told me he was going to the eastward to his wife's relatives, and was commissioned to introduce to the natives the news of the vicar's intended visit to them, to build him a chapel

there, and practise the people in such part of the ritual as his own party had learnt. When they landed on the coast, every one had a good loading of guns, and trade, and Master Moka had a store of guns and powder, blankets, and other trade. They reached Opo-tee-kee, where they built a chapel, and the very children were humming over some portions of masses in their play. Twice a day the chapel was crowded, chorussing together, although perhaps not twelve of all of them had ever seen the vicar or his cures. The vicar paid them a visit soon after, and many members signed their names as of his flock. Moka sent eight fat hogs to him as a present, and paid him great attention. It was rather a curious sight to look at, coming to a remote pah in New Zealand, crouching in a narrow tee-why, paddled by a half-naked Mow-ree, two priests in their long black frocks and three cornered hats. The morning before Moka sent his hogs to the vicar, he came to me saying he wanted me to let him have a hundred pound cask of gunpowder, and "how many pigs should my men have for it?" The bargain was struck, provided I saw the swine, which he hurried me to the pah to look at. I saw them, and approved, desiring them to be sent to me. They never came; but were destined as a present to the bishop; and, as I knew full well they never make presents without expecting a good return, I saw he had been practising a ruse to ascertain the value I set on his pigs, which he could

not otherwise, as he knew, have induced me to do.

A year or two previous to Captain Hobson being commissioned, a fluctuating tide of emigration from the adjacent colonies, set in upon this island, arising, perhaps, from the land fever which breaks out in them at times, with varied fury, and from the disappointments experienced by settlers not finding the El-dorados what they expected; so that the settlements during the above time varied much in their population, which, however, very materially increased just previous to the governor's reaching Sydney, as the colonization of the island was expected. The chief resort was to the Bay of Islands, and the Thames. The news of the arrival of the company's agents in Cook's Straits also attracted attention; many sailed there; few, however, remained; those I saw and heard of, were displeased with the aspect of the country; besides there was no cowry timber; moreover they enquired, why go to the coldest end, and entirely avoid the oldest and most frequented resorts, where there is a trade doing. I pointed out its fitness as a seat of government for the Two Islands, to which reason they objected, that the main population was confined to the northern, and when that was sufficiently settled, it would be time enough to look out to the southern, where only whale fisheries were carried on, occupied at present to the exhausting all that could be made of them. The most general

opinion of residents longest on, and mercantile interests longest connected with, the islands, coincides with the present site of the government, as being the most central point, every interest being duly considered.

When the Governor came, a great influx of people, newly arrived, was crowding Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, every room was occupied like assize time in a country town at home, and many had to make walls of barrels, and roofs of sails; glad at night to cover up head and all; and often wishful for dry clothes, a good fire, and less of wind. The beach was white with canvass tenements; some poor folks, whose capital barely exceeded their expctations, all flocking to "make a good thing of it," and to buy land while it could be got for a song, before the government bought it up. Here was, not a colony, but a kingdom, going to be made at once; they found that they must sail there, and boat it here, to look at a perch of land; all was bought up by old residents and the mission, even to Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka. As the hubbub approached, a land company was formed there, to buy up unpurchased tracts, and the very marsh was bought adjoining the beach, on the greater part of which land a paper house could not stand, without expensive draining. I suggested, at a preliminary meeting, that the then community would find it more to their interest, to sell a few small lots of ground for building, at such a rate as would convenience new comers of small means,

which would detain them at the settlement, greatly adding to the value of the land remaining unsold; and that plan would be in the end more profitable, than putting it up at extravagant rates, to realize quickly high profits on a few lots, at a rate too high for most, who, failing a location, must find their way back again whence they came. But the voice was general to get the most at once, and the hammer knocked down a few lots at from 100l. to 4O0l per acre, then a pause, and the sale was adjourned; the scheme hit on then was, to have a sale as ships arrived with new comers; in that way they made it answer, until the draining had to be done, when expenses dipped into the funds; and many people went back, who, if they had procured a strip of land whereon to build a habitation, would have added to the business and importance of the settlement. Much capital was at this period sent from Sydney, to be invested in the purchase of land; and, altogether, the business threatened; the movements of the London Company at the southward, the very active state of the local traders, and the constant employment of numerous coasters and ships, all promised a golden hereafter, and that not very far distant. The mania received a rude check from the news sent from New South Wales, where the Lieutenant-governor in esse was detained, to receive the instructions of the Governor and legislative council, under which he was to act. The cooling doubt was as to what exact period

purchases of laud would be permitted, without direct application to the local government; and the would-be purchasers awaited to hear what was decided; in their disappointment inveighing against what they generally termed the injustice of placing New Zealand under the rule of interests vested in another land; which interests were jealous of the existence of neighbouring rivals. However that might be, the ship at last arrived, freighted with Captain Hobson and others, to be officials; a meeting was called, an address of congratulation voted, and presented in the mission chapel; after which appeared a proclamation, forbidding any purchase of land from and after that day, the 30th of January, 1840; and until all present titles to land should have been examined and decided on as to their validity by a commission, which had to be appointed in New South Wales, and was to arrive in the Bay some time soon, that period not being definitely fixed. Here was at once an end to present speculation, and how to arrange for the future was a puzzling question; pockets were buttoned up, and departed to Sydney; and then the Terra Felix became brown rocks, fit only for savages, and very many discovered respecting it, that

Where ignorance was bliss, it was folly to be wise."

Every ship, and almost every passenger, brought to the Bay heavy cargoes of English and Colonial goods, for which, at first, ready sales were effected.

The uncertainty of movements made persons very loath to buy, and numbers, deciding to leave, offered theirs at such prices as they could most readily obtain; till, at last, money was so scarce, and goods so redundant, that the latter were frequently purchased under their cost in England. Provisions, too, speedily rose – reports of the Company's proceedings represented their emigrants as in a very dissatisfied state; their barque, the Tory, was near being wrecked on the west coast, and so damaged as to oblige Colonel Wakefield to charter a whaling brig in the bay to take him back to the southward; the reports as to the emigrants appeared too in the Colonial papers, and capitalists in Van Diemen's Land were induced to charter a vessel, with a view of supplying themselves with labour, by offering a passage from Port Nicholson to those willing to engage themselves in the older colony: hence, subsequently, and doubtless from the accounts given him by his own officers there resident, the Governor was induced to send there for labourers needed for the works at Auckland.

I would notice here a statement made in a letter of Colonel Wakefield, appearing in the recent work written by the Hon. Mr. Petre: –

"Captain Hobson struck a blow at the prosperity, and even existence, of the settlement, which was as little sanctioned by the Governors of the neighbouring colonies, as it was consistent with justice and

fair dealing, Although Sir John Franklin, the Governor of Van Diemen's Land, and the authorities of other adjacent colonies, had expressly and pointedly disapproved of, and taken measures to prevent, the abstraction of workmen from one settlement for the benefit of another, Captain Hobson sent a vessel hither with offers of free passage, of temporary locations without rent, and of other inducements to the working classes to emigrate to the settlement now tn progress in the Gulf of Showraka, whither a difficult navigation, a doubtful harbour, and a barren district, have deterred any but some hungry officials and Bay of Islands land-expectants from bending their steps."

If the workmen employed at Port Nicholson at the time the Governor sent for labourers were merely a part of the number there collected, I do not understand how the Governor erred; they were her Majesty's subjects, in a district under his government: it was certainly his duty, having the means and the opportunity, to afford employment to any of her Majesty's subjects, whose sole means of subsistence were to be derived from that employment. Where there is "justice in the palace, there will be bread in the streets." If the offer made tended to an exorbitant rate of wages, fault might be found with the Governor, not only for prejudicing local interests, but equally for an extravagant expenditure of the public revenue, unless, indeed, the

works were of immediate necessity to public interest; then, I imagine, what was actually needed to one district of the government, would be to the ultimate benefit of every district placed under the control of that government; in which all would be equally concerned. I do not understand the separation into two different settlements, as alluded to by the Colonel; knowing, that the district in which he was located was as much under Captain Hobson's control, as the district of the Thames, both parts of the same country. If a trading company had embarked their capital in land at the Thames, to make returns to them, by inducing people to purchase and settle on those lands, and Captain Hobson had proceeded to give advantages to their location, which other circumstances would not justify him in doing, then I could understand an error proven.

As the statement is, if fault is to be ascribed, it falls on those, who, having conveyed out labourers from England, had so ill-concerted their operations, as to have such excess of supply over and above the demand. Possibly, and with reason, those taken there might fear, that the inducements practised to their emigration had been made without that due care to their interests which they had a right to claim. And their claims were equally as strong upon the Company, as those of the purchasers of the Company's land. If the two districts can be considered as separate States, then must the Company possess

one commission, and the Governor another; if so, more conflicts and embarrassments will arise to the Colonial Office, than they will find it profitable to have to deal with.

The public is decidedly interested in this being made clear, as common sense will point out how easily a country can be ruined where there are constant opposing directions. The Colonel terms the Thames defective in fertility, and as a harbour. I may not oppose my judgment to his. I confine myself to facts. The Thames was known, frequented by shipping, and located by settlers, before the Company had assumed "a habitation and a name," even in England; scarcely a ship has been wrecked there: an immense trade has been done there in cow-ry timber, as is well known to her Majesty's Government, and to the merchants in Sydney, and hundreds of mariners who have been there. Captain Hobson ought, from his profession, to be able to appreciate the fitness of a harbour; and if, having this knowledge, he has erred in his choice from the leading of private interests, he has committed the honour of his trust. The land in the neighbourhood is equally as fertile as any in the holding of the Company, and does possess advantages of climate; the difference between the northern and southern being material; in the one nearly approaching to a perpetual summer, in the other chilled by the sensible presence of winter. The Colonel uses the term 'hungry

officials.' As the application is pointed, I do hope, in justice to the public, the reasons for that application will be exposed. Gentlemen holding her Majesty's commission ought to be above the imputation it conveys; nor with such stigma on its members, can a settler repose that confidence in the government, under whose protection he would settle, which his future interests require; and of this point he should be well assured before he embarks. The integrity of government has a great deal to do with the absolute comforts of a settler. Let us hope that, by the presence and expositions of such residents as the Colonel, the public purse will be expended solely for the public weal.

When the Governor landed, I took the liberty of pointing out that numbers of persons were prepared to invest capital in land, and that very many had landed whose objects would be fearfully prejudiced by any check given to the local trade, such as was effected by the tenor of the proclamation; that their means of support would be exhausted solely in living; and that they would return to the other Colonies, or remain there as beggars.

Captain Hobson landed as Consul, and to hold that office until the native chiefs acknowledged her Majesty's assumption of the sovereignty of the islands, when he was to assume the government (as a dependency of New South Wales), as Lieutenant-Governor. For this purpose, no time was lost, by the

assistance of the missionaries and the residents, in convoking the chiefs to assemble on the grounds before, and pertaining to the office of the British resident, then merged in Captain Hobson's commission – opposite to Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka.

On a projecting high land, looking seaward, where the blue Pacific rolls its waters through the rocky entrance to the Bay of Islands; neatly planted with native and exotic shrubs, which shaded a verdant turf, more pleasing to the eye from its strangeness, and contrast with the brown fern mantle of the country, and whose base is washed by a heavy surf roaring over rocks, a vast tent was erected, within which, at one end, was a raised platform, its sides hung with the standard of England, and various other flags. – A party of the Sydney dismounted police (resembling the light dragoons) paraded the lawn, which was dotted by unequal groups of well-dressed Par-kee-ahs and Mow-rees, in their native and European vestments, their lips parted by the universal pipe; which might be regarded as typifying an exchange of clays between two countries. Without the grounds, refreshment was vended to the European, and many a cork escaped (adopting poetic phrase) its glassy confines, to let out, not a lake, but Dunbar's foaming stout, or Hodges's paler streams; nor were more patrician fluids wanting – nor yet ardent Cognac, nor the clear burning fluid of St. Giles's dames, nor that spirit of storms, rum (the naughty-

call grog), which sailors gulp, ingulphing a torrid zone within no temperate one – all waters of fire to the sober Mow-rees, and which they might be taught, are waters that the devil navigates to reach the island of the soul. Nor was there wanting solid aliment – pork, salt and fresh, in various forms of hams, cold roast, pork pies, &c. &c.; baskets of bread and biscuit to be transmuted into metal. Troops of the natives in every direction came to the kor-y-ro (talk) or yarn with the Ranga-ti-ra New-a (great gentleman or chief) from Ingarani (England); you might inspect a group of brown skins, and then a group of white skins, and with little puzzling, discern the same stage-stock of feelings, common to both. The Europeans were very numerous, but the natives were more so; many, coming from a distance, carried guns. "What," thought I, "if these savages refuse to accede to the treaty, is to hinder them from driving us into the sea, or into their ovens? What greater proof of their yielding up the sovereignty than their not doing so, knowing we come to lord it over them?"

Then the groups broke up their circles, and extended lines to the house, passing through its hall, and thence ushered into a room, where stood the Governor to be, the centre of a semi-circle of missionaries, officials, and old residents; the people gave their cards, made their bows, and exit through a French casement – this was part the first, the levee; next, all adjourned in irregular procession to the

tent, the Governor and suite, Catholic, Church, and Wesleyan missionaries, occupied the platform; the remaining space was filled up with Mow-rees, edged with a deep border of pale faces. The Rev. Mr. Williams, chairman of the Church missionaries, was appointed by Captain Hobson as interpreter; the Captain read the treaty, which was, seriatim, explained by Mr. W. to the Mow-rees; that done, their opinions and subscriptions were canvassed. At first glib words of welcome came from the native speakers, occupants of the arena; some requiring to press the Captain's hand – that is, when the tongue ended, they came to the paws. Then a little by-play occurred. Generally, a discontent pervaded the settlers, elongating their faces relative to their trade and speculations, so suddenly checked by the proclamation, which was felt as playing them unfair; a company in London having been allowed a charter, while many of them had worked long in the land, and felt themselves uncared for. Then there were the land-jobbers, the gamblers of the south, looking like smugglers foiled in a run, or a pack of hounds lashed off their dying prey; and it did appear to me as if they were inclined to take a vengeful pleasure in thwarting the wishes of authority. Many, fidgetted with looks askew, with smouldering mischief, who like wetted lucifers, could not go off; some however got dry, and struck a light; and then the interpreter was accused of not interpreting correctly, and irrelevant observa-

tions were pulled in by the neck and shoulders, about the missionaries and the resident of the Crown taking vantage of their situations in purchasing the land. Then the accused let off their ire, and Captain Hobson had the toil of checking the charges of the disaffected and the discharges of the assailed – the by-play ending in inexplicable apologies, maintaining the truths they were sorry for. Then boomed again the big guns of the day – the natives. Now they too seemed out of sorts: wanted to know what they were to get? – why the Par-kee-ah could not come and go as heretofore? – whether the Queen would give more for their potatoes? &c. &c.

This was, however, mere bubble and squeak to the great dish that next was served. There was a rush, and a wide space cleared, and in bounded a huge mass of flesh, enveloped in a dirty mat of native manufacture; his eyes blearing with age, tall, erect, but, oh! so corpulent! and one who was of a noble race of carrion ancestors. It was he of the puissant arm (ten pounds to the square inch), Tarry-ah (the old Na-poo-ee chief, whose tribe were followers of the Pi-ky-po); not he, he did not tarry long before his ire bellowed forth, and yet in compass as if the pipes had been narrowed by asthma. He made no welcomes, although great in – and out. "Why should the Mow-rees be tou-raka-raka (i. e. slaves)? Why was (what I may word as) he to be the Great Little, that the Par-kee-ah chief might be the Little

Great. He wanted no governor; let him go home. Did he not know that Busby (the former representative of England) had close to him the gun of the Mow-ree? (Mr. B. was shot at by the natives.) Could not guns shoot now as then?" and much more complimentary matter, which I verily thought made the captain's uniform look a shade bluer; then the leviathan stamped about, and foamed at the mouth like an unemptied tankard: he verily resembled a piece of animated boiled beef, which, had it threatened in ire an offender's head, full soon had

Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed farewell.

Soon after this large fire had gone out, a mild-looking, middle-aged man, with a deportment as if he felt he was a gentleman, quietly entered the arena, and rested awhile on a wooden spear, which was the Mow-rees' ancient weapon; he smiled on all around. The storms were laid still, and a general calm suppressed the rising excitement. He looked as if he felt glad to see those he looked upon, and as if wishing them well. It was Nay-nay, a chief from Ho-ki-an-ga; esteemed by the white men, and to his own race known as one who dared to fight as well as to talk of peace. His voice was slow at first; nor needed he to raise it high, no sound intruded on it. "Friends! whose potatoes do we eat? Whose were our blankets? These (his spear) are thrown by. What has the Mow-ree now? The Par-kee-ah's gun, his shot, his powder. Many moons has he been now in our war-rees (houses); many of his children are also our children.

He makes no slaves. Are not our friends in Port Yackson (Sydney)? – plenty of Par-kee-ahs there; yet make no Mow-ree slave there. What did we before he came – fight! lots of fight! Now we can plant our grounds, and he will bring plenty of trade for Mow-rees; then keep him here, and all be friends together. I'll sign the book-a, book-a." Not much opposition occurred after he stepped forward and shook the captain's hand. But I have trespassed too long; staying only for one remark, that I was surprised the chief opposition should emanate from the followers of the Catholic, although his reverence the Vicar Apostolic was openly demonstrating kindly feelings to the English and their chief.

The meeting was adjourned, and in a short time after, nearly all the chiefs on the island had subscribed the deed, vessels being despatched for that purpose; and Captain Hobson, bursting his chrysalis state of consul, expanded his wings over New Zealand as its first Governor, – of that land which his profession was the first to discover, and to land on.

Trade was on the wane, the measures which the government of Sydney had seen proper to adopt, were, however wise or called for, adverse to its present growth; neither did anything seem to be done after the recognition. Doubtless time was requisite to settle down. Why was the occupation by us? If as a colony, why not have used every means of forwarding its growth? and not at the onset mar its trade. Not for long after the recognition, did the commissioners

appear to hold their investigations into titles to land; one by one they drew their slow length along – then those who had bought land of the natives, were advertised to send in the specifications of their titles to the secretary of the Sydney Colonial Government, a fortnight's sail, the commissioners of inquiry remaining in the Bay. It was perilous to make a purchase, the absolute extent of holding was limited to 2500 acres.

Month after month rolled on; nothing was heard or known when I left for England; and trade was not improving. Soldiers arrived, and were stationed at different places; then the Governor contracted with a Mr. Clendon to buy his stores and houses (where the Governor and his family lived), and lands adjacent, which were surveyed, partly laid out, and advertised as intended for sale as town lands, to be called Russell Town, when the news came from Sydney, returning, it was said, the bills drawn on the colonial treasury there, in payment of Mr. Clendon's property. Whether this was mere report I say not, suffice it, no sale occurred; as to Russell Town, stat nominis umbra, and many who were awaiting to buy allotments, on which to build stores, were taken aback.

The Governor sailed to the Thames, with the surveyor-general; they explored the country there, and fixed on a site for a town, to be styled Auckland; and there government removed, carrying with it most of the colonial officers, and part of the soldiery; police magistrates being stationed at various places throughout the country. There are, therefore, now

two settlements at the northward, and two at the southward, where foci of society may be found. The emigrant must not expect to find in colonial society that distinctions are discarded. Letters and cash will introduce all there; but the sixtieth related part of a distinguished or ennobled name, he will find to be always kept well brushed up and burnished; he will perceive aristocracy natural to man. Cash is such a desideratum, that I fear it too often introduces a weak tone of morality, and a coarseness into society abroad, from which, at home, we are redeemed by fashion – her only use; as it were playing into the hands of religion and principle, (if they can be spoken of as separate) for her own ascendancy. Out here, it will be well always to keep in mind, especially by the settler distant from a settlement, that man, dressed in a "little brief authority," is no more a man than the Mow-ree, who displays as much sense in his shark's-tooth ear-ring, as our fairest beauty with her golden drops –

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that."

A Judge, Attorney and Solicitor Generals, and other officers, are gone from England; the Bishop will soon follow.

The settler departing now, will find there, every protection; not neglecting his own caution.

The town allotments in Auckland were reported as likely to be put up by the Government, at £40 per acre; the sale taking place in April last.

CHAPTER VII. COLONIAL SCHEMES.

CHAPTER VII.

COLONIAL SCHEMES.

MR. PEEL, and Swan River; Colonel Torrens, Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and South Australia; the Earl Durham, Mr. Wakefield, and New Zealand; now Messrs. Somes, Baring, Wakefield, and New Zealand, have been of late years the playing cards of emigration. Mr. Peel and his followers, on landing, were tempted, by the prospects which they looked on with a prepared eye, singly to attempt that, for which, collectively, they required more time to accomplish, than their calculations had allowed for. Labourers would be masters, until they found their unaided exertions failed to support them; they returned as labourers to the masters they had deserted, whose unaided exertions had not been sufficient to retain the means needed to give employment to the labourers. The sugar of their expectations all melted away in the clime of their new Elysium; and, with little more to feed on than bitter reflections, those, who sought not "the narrow home" beneath the sandy and aluminous soil, remained to fag on, or fled else-

where. – The bantling yet lives, struggling with the diseases of its childhood. Years have rolled on since the first failure. Its slow growth develops an attenuated form, nor in any way approaches to the rapid growth of its elder brothers, New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. The settler, who exceeds not his means, may live in these colonies. The labourer will find, nominally, high wages; with all considerations, not much above home; and this settlement offers a field to him, equally with the other settlements, in a more constant demand for his labour than is met with at home, – this constituting the strongest feature to invite him to a residence amongst them; decidedly of no little value.

J. Hutt, Esq. (formerly emigration agent to the South Australian commission), is now employed to. direct the energies of this settlement. The South Australian commission has lost its quondam supporters; still existing, though without a rap in its coffers; and, as his Grace the Duke of Wellington observed in the House of Lords, that colony is now adding a very large item to the expenses of the mother country; while various statements have been received, denying the correctness of the reports, which were promulgated to induce emigration thither, representing its trade as being embarrassed, and its sickness distressing.

It appeared to me, that the commissioners should, at the onset, have more carefully guarded the markets

against monopoly; and that they prejudiced public interests wofully, by sending out emigrants before they had any land to give them. The officials were all, more or less, proprietors of land-orders, having a property in the soil, which they were eager to acquire in their own way, and to promote their own interests: I do not say dishonestly, but too eagerly to recollect that public, whose servants they were – whose interests they were sent out to forward. Even the first Governor, before he left, had one of his sections of land, close to the city of Adelaide, surveyed and laid out as a town, drawing purchasers from the land marked out, and partially built on by the government, by whom he was appointed. The section (134 acres) cost him probably between £80 and £100. A notice had been issued, disturbing persons who had been permitted to reside on the public land, until they procured locations; and a few days after the issue of that notice, 100 of the Governor's acres were offered for sale, in such lots as to tempt labourers – the payments to be made weekly, and the titles to the land given only when those payments had been completed. The 100 acres were thus sold for £1000, the remaining 34 acres being laid out in roads, &c.

The first persons who landed had to wait nearly nineteen months; some after-comers, in 1837, had to wait six months before they obtained land. In this way the allotments of the first settlers were raised in value, many preferring to purchase or rent of them,

to waiting on the survey. And an undue speculation was created in town lands, which were sold without reserve to the first comers – persons being disappointed in the projects of agriculture, which they had framed at home, turning their attention to trade and other pursuits. The interest of the money they had paid in London was not paid to them, nor any compensation afforded for the delay which the commissioners, to whom that money was paid, had caused; nor was the principal returned.

Emigration may be induced to a barren rock; capital may be sent there, and the settler, not raising his own food, may send off his capital to other countries, until he disappears in the grave, or other migrations; others may succeed him, and add to the efforts he may have made. While the numbers resorting there, the tonnage of ships employed in conveying them, and of those conveying their supplies: the buildings they have erected; are referred to as evidences of progression – the efforts being valued by resident interests, and forming an attractive picture. So long as this stream of emigration is kept up, capital pouring in, as wave succeeds wave, so long the scheme succeeds; but when the expenditure once receives a check, then the funds of its projectors are exhausted, until they too are scared away, leaving the den of their creation, with its prisoners, to the care of, and to be maintained by, the mother country, whose feelings are carefully appealed to,

that so useful a settlement may not be left in ruin.

The result of experience in New South Wales and in South Australia, proves that the Australian continent, varying in different parts as to its drought, observes almost one year of abundant rain, in which torrents sometimes deluge and fertilize the country; one year of less abundant rain; the three, four, or five ensuing years, gradually increasing in intensity of dryness, affecting all vegetable productions, and ultimately even animal life. In the years of wet, when labour is at command, the returns are beyond expectation, and the country is trumpetted as unequalled; in the other less prosperous and disastrous years, you are told nothing, except that the season is unusually dry. One great objection to all the returns by which colonial prosperity is proven, is that they are furnished by parties having property in the colony; the governors and editors, the farmers and labourers, letter-writers, have all, more or less, a stake in the colony; therefore must be deemed, as they would be in any part of the globe, naturally prejudiced in their statements. The most naming accounts published in this present year of 1841, are those of the South Australian Company, the largest land-holders in that province, who must either transport an immense body of men to work the lands in their holding, or induce to the emigration of capitalists, either to buy or rent them. Are not the droughts

of New South Wales, a territory now in our occupation for seventy years, as notorious as its name? and the accounts of its stock dying on the dry, shining gravel, where rivers had flowed – have they not often been read? Is not the paucity of water, compared with the extent of land, noticed by every traveller whose eyes are not closed by interest? All these bad qualities are to be met with, to a greater or lesser extent, and still to a perilous extent, in every district of Australia yet dwelt in.

It appears that the officials, landed in 1835, in South Australia, sent home glowing accounts of the vegetation, and fresh appearance of the country; the grass prevented them seeing their legs, they could repose, unsunned, sub tegmine graminis; in 1839, accounts were received that the roots of the grass appeared as often a yard apart as a foot, and that to the owner of the stock, the soil from its bareness of covering, was rendered painfully distinct; that the colony was in a state very little short of famine, an exportation duty being laid upon grain of 1s. per pound. The colony had then been founded time enough to have made attempts at turning the soil, to ascertain its capabilities, and I know those attempts were made; yet, in 1840, they say that they anticipated only great results from the agricultural operations in progress. What a tremendous evil (for to that is ascribed the delay of those operations) must have been occasioned by the officials first sent

out, who were all of them holders of land-titles before they embarked from London. The returns which hare been drawn out by order of the Governor are, I perceive, furnished by a respectable firm of land-agents in the city of Adelaide; it ought to have been shown how many belonged to companies, and how many to private individuals: 180,000 sheep are stated to be within the province. The returns of exports, dated July 1840, gave the number of bales of wool at 706 in one part of the paper, and 786 in another, valued on the spot at £20 per bale. Wool is of very different qualities and prices, of the same shearing – this year it ranged from 10d, to 15d in Sydney. The return, to be intelligent, should have shown at what rates per pound it was purchased, and how many pounds the bales might have averaged.

The next article of exports is oil – as black and sperm oil. In the beginning of 1840, only two companies belonging to South Australia had fisheries, and of them, not one had a ship at sea in quest of sperm whale (which are not caught, as black whales, in shore). One of them, the South Australian Company, may now have a ship scudding in the pursuit. This quantum of sperm oil must be looked on as purchased in adjacent markets to fill up cargoes; and ought not, without a quotation of its prices in Adelaide, to have been stated in the exports. In Sydney they fit out vessels regularly for that trade. The South Australian Company had established a fishery for black whale, within two

years of the first establishment of the colony, and this return is dated 1840. The price of the whalebone in the province ought also to be quoted. This they term their first six months of their first productive year. The revenue is drawn from wine, spirits, tobacco; publicans', store-keepers', and auctioneers' licences; producing, in the first quarter of '40, from a population of 14,000, £7371 3s. 4 1/2. Judging from the return made to the Governor, the prices of stock, and of mechanics', labourers', and servants', wages, are given with a very wide range: as Stock-sheep, 25s. to 40s.; cows, £12 to £18; oxen, £12 to £20; horses, £30 to £150; pigs, £2 to £6; goats, £3 to £6. Wages: – carpenters, 12s. to 15s.; masons and bricklayers, 12s. to 14s.; labourers, 6s. to 7s. per diem. Men servants, £25 to £60; women servants, £12 to £25 per annum. When I first went to Adelaide, I paid from 11s. to 12s. for carpenters; 6s. for labourers; £20 for female servants; and in 1839, I was able to get carpentering done from 8s. to 10s.; and labour for 5s. For mechanic's work it is usual to contract, and in that way you may escape the high rates. No one, however, should expect to obtain labour for less than 5s.; although in justice to the labourer, it is a matter of fairness to warn him, that I have known labour reduced to a lower term; and the shocks often given to credit in the colonies, by the consequences of unsuccessful speculations, frequently affect that price. The labourers were too

often paid at public-houses – an abomination which I believe the South Australian Company were the first to discountenance; paying at their bank or office, in their own paper or specie.

The chief staple of Australia, wool, is prejudiced by the dry season, though not to the same extent as agriculture. A person with a family intending to be a sheep-farmer in South Australia, could not do with much less than £2000, unless he was by his letters able to obtain credit; and the rates of colonial interest exceed home greatly. He must calculate on the cost of 500 sheep, one year's keep of family, self, and shepherd; some few sheep-medicines and accompaniments. He will most likely find, that to obtain pasturage in every way desirable, at the minimum price of 20s., that he must go to a great distance from the city, perhaps to districts, the remoteness of which will place him often at the mercy of the natives – a sanguinary race, when their numbers preponderate. This appears now a danger necessary to reflect on, as the late governor. Colonel Gawler, in a speech delivered by him in answer to an address, on May 11th, 1841, says, "Property to a large amount has been taken on the Murray, the largest river of Australia, in the vicinage of which are found the best lands in South Australia. And I should have felt it right to recover that property, and to have made examples of the perpetrators, had they resisted. This, I consider would have been an act of humanity, and would have tended to have

prevented that shedding of blood, and that war of extermination against the black race, which has elsewhere occurred. It appears to me, that unless this course be pursued, these blacks will coalesce, and will become very troublesome. But since the 1th of July, 1840, the Commissioners have recommended, not ordered (or I should have felt it my duty to comply), that the expense of the police should be thrown upon the colony; or, if not, that they should be dismissed, and the inhabitants should form themselves into an armed association for their own defence.

"I regret the necessity under which I was placed, to recall the police, who found that the natives had proceeded with the sheep much further than was expected, as an event which must produce future bloodshed in the province."

This indicates danger from the aboriginal race, and is to be considered. Over and above the items given to be drawn out by the sheep farmer, he must further calculate the charge for a conveyance, as a bullock-dray and four or six oxen, or how is he to carry his provisions and produce to and fro? also a cow, pigs, &c. The papers circulated by the South Australian Company,are not of the kind required. The real information they convey are loaded with attractive verbiage, and there is great trouble to obtain data for necessary calculations from them. It is not less necessary to remark on the notes of invitation issued previous to any emigration taking place to this colony. At a public

meeting held July 1st, 1834, an account of which appeared in the "Morning Chronicle," the chairman, W. Woolryche Whitmore, Esq., M.P., there observed as to South Australia – "It is of immense magnitude, sufficient for every purpose that the human mind can contemplate, with a climate of the most salubrious character; with a soil fruitful to an extreme; abounding in the best harbours, and possessing every qualification that may be necessary to form a great country, and a prosperous people."

Here I would observe (when I allude to New South Wales, I shall say something more as to the soil), that three harbours have been met with in South Australia; Nepean Bay, in Kangaroo Island (a day's sail from the mainland, and twelve hours sail from Adelaide), settled by the South Australian Company,and now abandoned. The harbour is undoubtedly good. Port Lincoln, a fine harbour, but surrounded by a scrubby, barren country; and Port Adelaide, on which an excessive outlay has been lavished, by the local government and South Australian Company to make it approachable, and adapt it to the purposes of commerce. – Clay, Esq., observed, "On the contrary, it will be found to offer to the capitalist – I mean of course the small capitalist – a prospect that amounts almost to a certainty of bettering his condition; of rapidly increasing his capital, and improving the situation of himself and those who are dear to him." (Oh no; vide, p. 163.) – J. Hutt,Esq. "And the fact is, the United

States have effected what it is the object of this association to effect. They have all their waste lands sold by public auction, and, according to a uniform system laid down, to the highest bidder. This is the plan which we desire to establish."

A uniform price has been established, but not the auction system. That formerly prevailed in Sydney, and is now done away with by uniformity of price, 20s. per acre on all waste land. I cannot think this rate low enough for pasture land, such as Australia, requiring as it does extent for successful grazing operations.

M. D. Hill, Esq. M. P.: "I say on the behalf of the association, and on behalf of the emigrants themselves, that we will not condescend to ask any favour of the Government, or to ask aught at its hands. We seek no favours of the Government; we will accept no charity at its hands; because we will not allow it the opportunity of imposing laws on us, on the ground that the mother country has exerted herself in our favour, or has any demand upon our gratitude."

The late Governor, in his speech before alluded to, says, "I wrote to the Commissioners as early as in April, 1839, to inform them that my expenditure 'menaced, the self supporting system.' The province cannot proceed with advantage, under the anomalous relations in which it now stands. It is not, declaratively under the Crown, neither is it really under the Commissioners. It cannot look, except in

most extraordinary cases, for assistance from the public treasury of Great Britain; and yet, by the termination of its funds, it is not a self-supporting, or even a loan-supporting, colony."

The Colonization Commissioners, appointed in England, published the following remarks, as to the price of land, or rather one effect of that price. "But every thing depends on the sufficiency of the price required for public land. Even he, whose object is to buy land at the outset of the colony, has a strong interest in the sufficiency of that price. If it were so low, that the whole industry of the colony should soon be broken up into small fractions, and that the larger capitals originally taken out should perish for want of labourers to use them, then land, which had become the property of individuals, would possess little or no value."

In one of the circulars floating about, it is stated, "I know some who, within the present year of 1840, arrived without a pound in their pockets, but who, by a few months' service, have bought five acres-lots of land, and are now cultivating their own little farms!"

The limits of this work prevent a more extended notice of contradictions. This self-supporting colony has, this year, been allowed 150,000l. by the home Government. Their seasons are stated as productive; let them now show their energies, and if all they have said is correct, they will not need future support. One petition they may prefer, to advise in their own government.

To pastoral pursuits only do I consider Australia fitted, her remoteness, and the variations in the prices of wool, with her occasional droughts, render great extent of land, and a low rate of labour desirable, if not absolutely necessary, even for those pursuits. Whilst we may not leave a countryman to perish, unaided, on the shores of his seeking, it is to be hoped the colonists will put their shoulders to the wheel, and not hang too heavily round the neck of the parent. Three years yet must elapse before their colony can be fairly judged; unless the public coincides with me, that their expectations are not well based.

One fact I have omitted; among other inviting features, it has been represented that convict associations are not to be formed in that colony. In the speech of the late Governor to the legislative council, before extracted from, occurs this observation: "Very few criminal offences have been committed by persons of these classes, viz. the emigrants; but, in addition to them, our white population consists, not only of highly respectable and very valuable settlers from the neighbouring colonies, but of a large number of persons who have been first transported to those colonies for offences committed in the mother country."

In the year 1838, a man from the adjacent settlements was hung in Adelaide, for firing at the sheriff with intent to kill. One evening I was sitting with my family, reconciling by discourse, our thoughts to

the home abroad; large logs were blazing on our hearth, when the outer door was suddenly pushed at, as if assaulted for entrance without leave: it gave way, and the sheriff appeared, hurried and disconcerted. He said he had been shot at – inquired if I had seen any man lately pass my window. I told him I had been too much engaged to notice; and calming his excitement, made out that a burglarious attack had just then been made on his house; and on his appearing outside his door, he was shot at, the muzzle being pointed close to him. This is life in the wilds; reposing in quiet thoughts, attuning them to give harmony to scenes where home was not felt, robbery, murder, vice, break in upon the door, or ear, to scare, with their discordance, that harmony away. – Soon after the culprit was seized, tried, and condemned; and I crossed over the far-famed Torrens on a dead tree, lying across it. The scene of execution being fixed on a part of the park-land attached to the northern half of the town, which was then very thinly inhabited, and distant from the southern, or principal part of the city; a tolerably large concourse were assembled near an iron storehouse of the government, around a tree, which projected from its trunk, some little distance from the ground, a thick branch, in size nearly equalling itself; the pendant noose was its distinguishing pennant. At a short distance, slowly drawn over the rugged

road in a cart, beside his coffin, came the condemned, reading, with a gentleman of the Romish faith, prayers of his creed, to pacify, in a few hours, with a mind distracted by crowding anxieties, a Deity, whom, mayhap, a life-time of sordid crimes had angered against him! The prisoner was not more than twenty-three years of age; and his muscles were massively developed, though brief in stature. The part of executioner was undertaken by some one, of course unknown, but reported to have been an old convict, in durance on some petty charge. He was said to have been afterwards recognised, from the circumstance of his taking off his gloves, and one of his hands being perceived to be branded. A difficulty had occurred in procuring the hangman; only this man could be persuaded to officiate. On a given signal, this being galloped round the base of a hill that had previously hid him from our sight, dressed in a white coarse, duck frock and trousers, his hands wrapped up in prodigious sized gloves, like gauntlets; his face, under the shade of an old black beaver, was covered by a black mask; he rode with short stirrups, which also added to the impression of his appearance, his stature not being low. He charged his steed at full gallop direct on the tree, the horror and his pace broke him a pathway, each flying as if his ministration was for him. He performed in a wretched manner the duties of

his office: on the cart gliding from beneath the criminal, he seemed to have left him hanging not fully suffocated; the convulsive twinges of the frame – suffice it, however, he was brought back, when I was obliged to satisfy the indignant and horrified spectators that the criminal's last quivering pulse was gone. I remained with the sheriff and others in the ring barred off, and aided them in allaying the rising tumult. The first part of this horrid scene was to me also painful: to hear the sheriff – the prosecutor, read the death-warrant of the criminal; the first executed in this colony.

Another day was horrified by some emigrants entering my house hastily with their guns, asking together if I had heard that one of their fellow emigrants (these had all come with me in the same ship, and under my superintendence) had been murdered? I hastened with them; and gleaned the facts, that he had gone, intoxicated, to witness a corobarree – a hideous dance with which the natives amuse themselves on a dark night beside glowing fires. After the dance was ended, the unconscious drunkard had ventured within their circle, and, sitting beside one of the women, had trespassed on the freedom of a salute. His companions gradually retired to their homes; and it is supposed that the effects of his potations threw him into a sleep, while behind the collar-bone of him then lying in the moonbeams, one of the natives

thrust a wooden stiletto, sharply pointed, and direct into the heart – for such were the wounds discovered; the features of the corpse were very pale and tranquil. This poor wretch, who had traversed so many miles of ocean to meet his fate at the hands of a native assassin, could not have contemplated without horror a fate similar to his own; nor would, for the advancement of his interests, have sought the expiring fire of wild barbarians, as a fitting scene to sleep away existence. You return from, or hear of, such occurrences in the uncultured wilds with a saddened heart. That home, too, is haunted by the fiend of speculation; as long as you can keep off sleep, the thoughts are all agog: some survey some town to be, some cattle or sheep company, with its one hundred per cent. profits, all enticing on to gambling – for it is nothing better – and that, too, with those whom, perhaps, in any other scene, or any other occasion, your mind must be averse to. No gambler can be honest; nor should speculations be encouraged which may probably promote the vice that robs man of all that renders him pre-eminent.

I will now put down items for the consideration of 1he intending emigrant, which he can fill up with the prices before quoted.

I have given the prices of '38 for a single man only, as giving an idea of what oould be done in the way of husbandry at that time: –

THE SMALL CAPITALIST GOING TO SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

1841 1838

Passage from England, from £30 (steerage) to £60 (cabin)(For man without wife.)

£55

80 acres of land. (Smallest quantity sold, except by residents.)

£80

Stock, say for limited requirements, one cow £ , five bullocks £ , two sows £ , 12 fowls £

£278

Seed

£4 1

Two labourers (12 months wages and keep; if servant could be afforded to the wife, her wages and keep must be added.)

£160

Fencing, say eight acres

£75, low

Maintenance of self and family for twelve months, clothes, &c.

£35

Bullock cart and instruments of husbandry

£35

Expenses of transit at home and abroad, previous to locating

..

Miscellaneous omitted

Total

£722

1   One bushel to an acre, say 10, at from 6s. 6d. to 7s. 6d.

What could in '38 have been effected by agricultural attempts, would only have incurred a loss.

The first Association for colonizing New Zealand is as silent as its noble and talented projector; and the second attempt is thus stated as being perilled at the very onset. In the words of one of its Directors, "The act of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, instituting a commission of inquiry into, and restricting the extent of the titles to the land – although such titles, if fairly acquired, had been guaranteed by repeated declarations of the Queen's Ministers – threatened the stability of the settlement, and induced many to propose an abandonment of

NEW ZEALAND FOR SOUTH AMERICA. A deputation from the settlers to Sir George Gipps, the Governor of New South Wales, to whom the question of titles had been refened, received, and brought to us satisfactory assurances from his Excellency of his high estimation of the body of settlers, and of the measures of the Company. These assurances, showing sound judgment, and an enlightened statesmanships the want of which had been so apparent in the neglect and errors of the home Government – revived confidence amongst us. Sir. G. Gipps ratified, so far as his power extended, the titles to land acquired by purchasers under the Company, in the 110,000 acres first bought by them, subject only to the occupation of that extent in one continuous block. His Excellency refused to sanction the plan of selection by the first purcliasers from all the Company's possessions, which would have been tantamount to the system of special surveys practised in other neighbouring Colonies."

The above is a quotation from a letter addressed to The Secretary of the New Zealand Company, by Colonel Wakefield, the agent resident in New Zealand, dated February 26, 1841.

It shows that there existed an alarm sufficient to call for his (Colonel W's) notice, and to incur the expenses of a deputation taking a fortnight's sail to Sydney, residing there to represent the threatened danger, and a fortnight's sail (perhaps a month's)

in returning; and this, too, at the very onset. What could have been the position of the colonist? Suppose yourself there, with an order for so much land, to the cultivation of which, and returns of that cultivation, you intend to direct your energies; you hear that the validity of the title you have purchased may possibly be questioned. Will you apply your capital to work that land? even on receiving Sir G. Gipps's reply? Certainly; his sound judgment and enlightened statesmanship may be read, but that he ratifies the proceedings, by which you have to be guided, is by no means apparent; a doubt being implied how far he could do so, by using the words, "as far as his power extended." His Excellency assuming a right of interfering with the Company's proceedings, by his refusal to sanction one part of that plan which led you to make your purchase in London; if the capitalist hesitates in his proceedings, how is the labourer to obtain employment, unless Captain Hobson, or some one else, hearing of his situation, and requiring labour, sends to invite him?

The Hon. W. Petre, in a work he has just published on the Company's settlements, from which he has lately returned to England, states, that "Shortly after I left, the Bally arrived, bearing the terms of the final arrangement between the New Zealand Company and the Government." Not, however, explaining what that arrangement may be.

The Company are chartered to purchase lands in

New Zealand; the local government, having, or not having, a restraining power, interferes, until the titles to the lands purchased shall have been adjudged to be valid. The charter does not give the Company a power to purchase as they please, or the local government could not stay their proceedings. As affecting present purchasers, no one can say whether the title will be recognised or not; and if decisive information be not afforded on that head, I should deem it a risk to purchase any land order in England. The specifications of land claims were lodged with the Colonial Secretary in Sydney, as late as January of the present year; what length of forms, or investigation, they had to undergo, did not appear; from there, they were to be referred back to New Zealand, for the inquest of the three Commissioners (one has been sent from London); this preparatory step would occupy, perhaps, three months; so that no investigation would occur before May, and the adjudications might not be published before the latter end of this year, 1841.

The settler on the eve of embarking, would do well to await further intelligence, to know the government decision on titles to land already purchased; and what regulations they will issue affecting its future sale. The arrangements between the local government and the directors of the company, ought to be rendered very clear, before any purchases are made from them, however they may be guaranteed here.

I consider it a bad plan taking land orders; when yon arrive you may be determined to settle in districts where the company have no land, and it is not so easy to part with your order there, as it might seem from the accounts you hear at home. In the colonies an excitement is created about land before it is offered in the market; not the pen of Robins could depict greater advantages than do the colonial land-sellers, when they are dressing a district for the hammer. All this requires time and local experience; reference to courts of law are more expensive abroad than at home; and if new settlers are to be hampered with such proceedings on settling, they need not expect any other result than pauperism.

Mr. Petre, at the conclusion of his narrative, adds to our uncertainties about the settlement: he says, "I now foresee no check to the prosperity of the colony, except, indeed, in the possibility of Governor Hobson's perseverence in a policy with respect to the seat of government, which admits of no justification. Trusting that this policy has been ere now abandoned, I will only add to the statements contained in Colonel Wakefield's letter, which I brought to England, that if unhappily the Governor should continue to reside, with all the heads of departments, at nearly the greatest possible distance from the centre of the islands, and the seat of the great majority of the British population; and by means of the public money to draw off emigrants conveyed to Cook's Straits, at the

expense of purchasers of land in the Company's settlements, the colonization of New Zealand must be brought to a speedy and disastrous end"

The Governor having gone to great expense in erecting the government house, and other buildings, barracks, &c. at Auckland, it is not quite just to expect that he will dip his hands again, and so soon, into the public purse for another remove. The reasons stated by Mr. Petre are not so strong as he feels them, and are besides met by others (such as the government being in the neighbourhood of long established trade), equally demanding his Excellency's consideration. On what grounds is the distress at home to be neglected, to throw money into the Pacific?

Therefore are we now to presume, as the Governor is decidedly stationary at the Thames, that there is an end to the Company's settlements?

In the next place, as I am writing for the public, I must notice the prices of provisions at Wellington; Mr. Petre states mutton and beef are from 8d. to 1s. per pound; pork, from 4d. to 6d. I think, if Mr. Petre will refer to market prices, he will find this below the actual cost; it certainly is below the cost in the district where, to judge from his statement (although singular it should be so), there is a smaller population; and, as the resident agents of the Company must be aware, more extensive and older trade – I mean the northern districts. Poultry and eggs, he

says, are scarce and dear at the south; and neither butter, nor milk, are stated by him, more than that milch cows were there to produce enough for constant sale.

In a letter, dated May, 1841, published in the "New Zealand Journal," the prices are given as follows: – mutton, 1s.; beef, 1s. to 1s. 4d; pork, 7d.. bacon, 1s. 1d.; salt butter, 2s. 6d.; fresh butter, 4s. to 5s.; bread, 8d. 21bs.; tea, 5s.; sugar, 4d. to 7d.; cheese, 2s. 6d.; beer, 6d. a pint; liquor, 3s. to 3s. 4d.; rice, 3d.; stout shoes, 13s. to 25s.; women's shoes (worth at home 2s. 6d.) 7s. to 8s.; natives build a hut (small?) for a blanket and 10s.

The Company's wages are 20s. a week, with 10lbs. salt pork, and 10lbs. flour, as rations; carpenters' wages, from 10s. to 12s.; sawyers', from 12s. to 15s.

Extracts from letters published in the "New Zealand Journal": –

Kawia, New Zealand, 14th February, 1840. "One great convenience in the new colony is, that provisions are comparatively abundant and cheap. I have no doubt that before this time, fresh pork will be sold there at 6d. a pound, and potatoes at £4 per ton. There is plenty of work, but the labourers do not obtain exorbitant wages. Ladies, however, did not seem quite at home."

Port Nicholson, llth February, 1841. – "Port Nicholson is a very good place; there is not much

fine land about it, but there is some fine trade, and a fine port for shipping. I have got full quarter an acre of ground, for which I pay £7. It is rather out of the heart of the town for business for a time: but there is scarcely a lot of ground to be got in the heart of the town. I know some of it let for £160 per acre a year, and some of it sold as high as £1000 to £1200 per acre. There must be some prospect before people will go that length. – (Fudge! the footman will play for, nominally, as high stakes as his master, for the look of the thing, but pays in a much lower coin.) – There was no house to let, or if there had, it would cost a very high rent, so we put up a tent! on our ground, of some sheets, blankets, and canvass; wherein we have lived five or six weeks. – (This, in a rainy rheumatic country, crutches had need to be handy, where people care not about making cripples of themselves.) – John's a fool for himself, to stop at home in misery, when he can earn 10s. here, with only working nine hours a day. A shoemaker or tailor does well here. A pair of good stout shoes will cost from 20s. to 25s. – (Dear enough.) – I think Lorimer was a fool not to come out. An ordinary servant gets £20 a year; she might make 50s. or 60s. per week by washing and dressing. – (Dress making?) – I believe there will be some very contradictory accounts of this place sent home, because people come out here that are not fit for the place. Because there is nothing in their way to do, they give the place an ill

name. We had a great deal of our clothes spoiled on the passage."

February 25th, 1841. – "I may say, without the slightest exaggeration, that its prospects (i.e. the colony) at this time are brighter than ever. Until within the last two months, there has been a great difference of opinion as to its success or failure, some urging with great feasibility, there is no colony can flourish without an export; the others, amongst whom I have always joined, insisting that exports will not be wanting, but would be found in abundance. The latter has proved to be the case, the invention of a machine for dressing flax having been already discovered, and in use. – (Why the machine alluded to could, from the accounts, have only just made its appearance – by no means proven.) – And another will be the timber, both in logs and planks; a company having started a large steam-mill for sawing plank. – (The colonists will consume all for some time; the timber of that distrist, the koi-kee-tare, not being in much repute in the colonies, although the same tree decidedly furnishes better timber there than it does to the northward.) – There will be also quantities of oil (but little), resin (paltry), gum (what?), and other articles to be discovered."

The same journal, of a much earlier date, contains an account furnished by the pen of Mr. E. J. Wakefield, which I extract: – "No distinction is made as yet between different classes of labourers; the wages

of all are 28s. a week in private employment; 20s. a week in the Company's, 11s. 5d. of which is served out in rations.

From these accounts it would appear, that the rate of wages was on the increase; in the Company's employ as much as 11s, 5d. a week. This would indicate a paucity of labour, or redundancy of work; and that in the early state of the colony; the Governor not having abstracted more than 30 out of 3000, according to a statement in the letter of February 25, 1841, and which 30 are therein described as a bad lot, so that his invasion of their settlement did not much injury to it, and it is certainly desirable to understand whether it was "Hobson's choice" with them, government work or none? Let us consider the wages of a labourer, having a wife on landing, together with their weekly expenses in New Zealand, stating the wages at 31s. 5d., the Company's rate.

Wages.

£ s. d.

For man £1 11 5

(Woman's work uncertain, varying as to the ability; 50s. for washing. &c, (vide p. 170) lowest probably 2s. a day; supposing her to be fully employed by her family.)

£1 11 5

High living.

s.

d.

10 lbs. fresh meat

10

0

1 lb. butter

2

6

20 lbs. flour.

6

8

18 lbs. potatoes.

3

6

21 pints beer.

5

3

4 oz. tea

1

0

1 lb. sugar.

0

4

1 1/2 lb. soap

1

0

1/2 lb. candles

0

6

pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt

0

7

£1 . . 11

4

Low living.

s.

d.

14 lbs. salt meat.

8

2

201bs. flour.

6

8

14 lbs. potatoes.

2

4

21 pints beer.

5

3

4 oz. tea

1

0

1 lb. suger

0

4

1/2 lb. candles.

0

6

pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt.

0

7

1 1/2 lbs. soap.

1

0

£1 . . 1

0

To which add rent (always high), clothes, tobacco, tools, &c.

THE SMALL CAPITALIST GOING TO NEW ZEALAND.

1841 1838

(Previous to Arrival of Company.)

Passage. (Single Man.)

£60

100 acres.

£30

Seed and Stock; two goats £ , or one cow, £; two horses, £ , or four oxen, £ , twelve fowls, £ , two sows, £ ; Wheat, ten bushels at 7s. 6d.; tools, implements....

£100

Two labourers; twelve months' labour and keep.

£120

Fencing, fifteen acres.

£30

Boat and oars &c.

£25

Maintenance of family and self for twelve months, clothes &c.

£30

Expenses of transit at home and abroad, previous to locating.

Miscellaneous omitted.

Total

£395

The slight discrepancy between Mr. Petre's statement and others, may not be regarded as material; however, the above rates would be most ruinous to the labourer, unless his wages were proportionate; and, if in proportion, would render living at the onset, excessively onerous to the settler of limited means; indeed of any means. He will judge from the above quotations. He should calculate well, before he decides on emigrating, all possible expenses. This work may furnish him with data, but he must not omit to gain the most recent. First of all, there is the passage; next, having decided on the extent, the land; next, stock, implements, seed; then, buildings, as house, and such offices as he may desire;

next, one year's labour, keep of self, family, and labourers for twelve months; next, expenses on landing, as board and lodging for his family and himself, while seeking his future residence; outfit for self and family for six months.

I will add to the above accounts taken from the Honourable Mr. Petre's work and the Journal, some items of charges known to myself in New Zealand.

Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, October 23d, 1839.

PROVISIONS.

Biscuit, 8d. per pound.
Potatoes, 6s. per cwt.
Live Pigs, 3d. per pound, 25 per cent. off.
Coarse Sugar, 4 1/2d. per pound.
Tea, 3s. per pound.
Coffee, 1s. to 1s. 6d. per pound.
Rice, 3 1/2d per pound
Lard, 9d. per pound.
North American Flour, 32s. to 40s. per 100 pounds.
Salt, per ton, .£10.
Mustard, per bottle, 3s. 6d.
Sauces, ditto, 2s. 6d.
Bottled Beers, ditto, 2s. 6d.
Rack, per gallon, 4s. 6d.
Wines (poor), from 30s. per dozen.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Iron Ware, 7d. per pound.
Spades, 3s. 6d.
Cross-cut Saw, to 40s.
Pit Saw, to 45s.
Saw Files, each, 1s.
Twine, per hank, 6d.
Blue, 4s. per pound.
Cups and Saucers, 7s. 6d. per doz.
Plates, 10s. per dozen.
Nails, retail, 10s. per 1000.
Letter-paper, 2s. per quire.
Pens, 10s. per 100.
Pipes, 9s. per gross.
Tobacco, from 3s. per pound.

October 1840, Bay of Islands.

Daily Expenses of Two Persons with Two Children,

at at Inn – Breakfast, Dinner, Tea, and Beds .. £1 1 0
The Breakfast consisting of Tea, Bread, and Salt Butter, and Cold Salt Meat.
The Dinner – Pork (often salt), Potatoes and Greens;
Wine and Beer – extras.
The Tea – Tea, Bread and Butter.

1841 – Beef and mutton, 1s.; pork, 8d. to 10d.; salt pork, 6d. to 7d.; per ton, ranging from £28 to £33; salt butter, 1s. 6d.; fresh butter, a fair supply, from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. Live pigs, 4d. to 5d., 25 per cent, off. Eggs, 2s. to 3s. 6d. per dozen. Fowls and ducks, from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. each. English cheese, 2s. to 2s. 6d.; hams, 1s. 5d.; potatoes, from £6 to £8 per ton. Flour (Van Diemen's Land), per bag of 200 pounds, 40s. per 100 pounds; rice, 3d.; meals at inns, 2s. 6d. each, without beer or wine. Brandy, 14s.; rum, 5s.; rack, 3s. 6d. Sawn timber, 20s. to 25s. per 100 feet. Washing, from 3s. per dozen. Labour was to be had at from 4s. per diem, and those who knew how to manage the Mow-rees, might glean it at a much lower rate.

Here seems to be a great facility of procuring necessaries not so readily met with at recent settlements.

Children's boots were made at 8s. per pair, durable; men's shoes from 14s.; ready-made clothes, hats, shoes, boots; haberdashery; hosiery; linen drapery; ironmongery; crockery; in constant supply, and extensive assortments; together with occasional importations from North America of tobacco, at 1s. per pound, by the ton; of furniture, and various edibles, among which, most excellent biscuit and flour, at £28 per ton, at a time when dear in Sydney. From South America, horses and wheat; and, occasional, French ships, with goods and light wines; I have bought a

fair claret, as a common drink, for 4s. the gallon. Taxes by this time are, I have no doubt, levied on all foreign importations; indeed, wine and spirits I know to be taxed, but forget the rate. Sir George Gipps, on the Lieutenant-governor's representation, omitted tobacco, because so universally consumed by the natives; I presume it to be yet untaxed.

In Ko-ro-ra-ri-ka, and about the Bay of Islands, there were scattered in 1830, before the Company arrived in New Zealand, between 700 and 800 residents, English and some French; there were thirty-nine good sized houses, comfortable as at home, not built by natives; fifteen stores; ten grog-houses; three well-conducted inns; two protestant chapels; one catholic chapel; twenty saw-pits, two-thirds of them in work; and about fifteen smaller houses or huts; one billiard-room attached to one of the stores; and one printing-press belonging to the mission.

All these several numbers are now increased; there is another press publishing a weekly journal; and a well-conducted bank, which the residents originated, but which has shareholders in other countries. There are also six native settlements; commencing from the heads of the Bay to the Ke-si-ke-no, and going beyond three pahs, and then retrograding to the heads,taking two shores; and a native population, also scattered, of more than a thousand souls. Taking also into consideration, American, French, English, and Colonial, whaling and merchant vessels occasionally fitting, there

must have been a fluctuating population of, at the very least, between three and four thousand Europeans and natives; the addenda of Government now there may add a few more hundreds; besides its propinquity and communication with Ho-ki-an-ga and the Thames, where also are numerous populations, native and European.

Was this of no importance? did not the foreign intercourse require supervision? Yet Colonel Wakefield has been in the Bay of Islands.

The fact of Mr. Petre's return to New Zealand is not, in my opinion, worth, as has been hastily judged, "an ocean of pamphlets." 20 Mr. Petre is a young man, not catering for the location of a family; he has the means of escaping from any extreme of distress or unpleasantries, while the first returns of the speculations to which he is directed, excite him equally with the novelty of the scenes in which he is engaged; themselves of stirring excitement, as contrasted with those to which he has been accustomed, and which often pall upon the young mind.

I have no wish to be thought to look upon any matters on which I have written, with a party-directed eye. The Company and Colonel Wakefield, &c. &c., the Governor and officials, &c. &c, are in my eyes, all reputable persons, sans peur, et sans reproche. Mr. Petre's name would not have honoured my pen, but for his publication, and connexion with a Com-

pany, who, in London and the country, are bagging all the game they can for the colony of New Zealand, driving the people into the nets of their settlements.

For that public to which I belong, I am writing to direct to good, to warn from evil. What matters who the writer, who would "do unto others as he would they should do unto him." – Attached to a motto of his earlier days, "In patriam populumque," he is anxious that he may not be suspected of other and lesser motives than that, nor let any ascribe to him a purposed attack.

"Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur."

20 Examiner, Oct. 23, 1841.

CHAPTER VIII. COLONIAL POLICY.

CHAPTER VIII.

COLONIAL POLICY.

I WOULD still dwell on that measure with which the government of England was introduced among old friends in the Pacific; humble, perhaps, but still friends, who for many years past had evinced a preference for English interests, had been hospitable to her subjects, giving aid to her commerce, masting her navy, and willingly resigned their sovereignty to her invitation. What is the equivalent given? Christianity? Enough – when it shall be effected; the fulness of time is not arrived – until it has, your obligation is not cancelled. There is yet to come a time when the simple Mow-ree will be able to reflect on what is now done; when he will no longer be an animated mass of ignorance, on whom civilized beings can impose. If we love our country, why may not he? If we are proud of our importance as a nation, why should it be wrong in the poor denizen of other soils to cherish a feeling of national distinction? If he does not, when his eyes are fully open, grieve for such distinction, it will be that he could not of himself have achieved it, and that he

has received an equivalent. The parallel case is the guardian and the ward: and who honours the guardian, who takes advantage of his ward's minority? In what manner has England managed her trust? how best could she do so? By imparting speedily the benefits of civilization; to be most quickly imparted by the associations of a careful system of colonizing, by protection against vice and fraud – by instruction.

Captain Hobson is sent out there to ask permission to govern them; and this right allowed, the machinery of government is on the instant set in motion, the chief direction being assigned to the government of New South Wales, under which he is to exercise the right when acquired; the Governor and Legislative Council of that colony directing for New Zealand. At home, when a candidate presents himself to be delegated to the direction of affairs, we immediately begin to ask who he is? whence he came from? Putting the same queries to that government, this is the answer: – The colony of New South Wales was formed many years ago, in the year 1778, as a depository for criminals; the Home Government then held out inducements to emigrants to resort thither. Grants of land were made, or land was sold at a very low rate, to them, and the crime of the mother country furnished them labour, also at a very low rate; besides other benefits bestowed, to entice them to the country. Give a man a business, capital, and market where he

may sell his produce, at a remunerating price, what shall hinder him acquiring wealth, if he has but moderate industry? The pastoral qualities of the country are at the first descried, and to pastoral pursuits the settler directed his attention; having the extent of pasturage which the nature of the country renders essential to success. Land cost little – labour little or nothing, – stock was all; here were no difficulties; the drawbacks, dry seasons, could be borne; while the expenses of the pursuit were so trivial. Agriculture is attempted, but experience denotes that the nature of the country prevents its being much extended; and the land under cultivation, as compared with the age and population of the colony, fully demonstrates that.

I copy from a Sydney paper, of 1841, the following, showing the expense of cultivating an acre of land in that country, subject as it is to seasons, once in three and five years, when the ground cannot be worked to pay expenses: –

Dr.

£. s. d.

To two plough mgs, sowing, harrowing, and covering in seed....

1 10 0

Seed five pecks, at 5s. per bushel

6 3

Reaping

1 4 0

Carting and stacking

0 5 0

Thrashing 1s. per bushel

0 16 0

Eight bags

0 6 8

Freight 6d. per bushel

0 8 0

Commission, storeage, and waste

0 8 0

Total..........

£5 3 11

Cr

£. s. d.

By value of sixteen bushels of wheat
(being the average produce of the Colony),
5s. the average price this year

4 0 0

Balance

1 3 11

Total

£5 3 11

I should imagine the averages stated above to be rather too low: that fifteen bushels ought to be twenty, and the 5s., 7s. 6d.

After a course of years, the aids, from the purse of the mother country, are restricted; no more grants are made. People growing speedily rich, created an attractive character for the country. The aid of Government is still decreased, and more time is requisite for amassing fortunes. When efforts in the mother country are noticed to form settlements in her neighbourhood, and colonial character is reputed as very degraded, her vitiated morals exposed (to deter emigration from her shores), and turn it to a new direction, the fears of the old colony embarrass her reason; she agitates to get rid of the obloquy; and, at last, petitions the Home Government to rid her of the stigma thrown upon her: at the same time overlooking the benefit she has derived from the aid, which the occasion of that stigma has been to her. Her request is granted – the aid is still more circumscribed, and the transportation of criminals, the chief source of her labour and her strength, is stopped. As the aid given is withdrawn, in equal ratio decline her prosperity and her trade; in last February trade was, as it had long been, stagnant and embarrassed. Ships rode long at their anchors, and glad to take low freights, or obliged to seek the Indian ports in ballast; and an article in a weekly journal, 21 of the 16th of October,

thus depicts her state: –

"Sydney papers to the 7th of June, have arrived; the stagnation in the business of the Colony continued unmitigated. All the different branches of trade were suffering. The low price of wool, and the absence of demand for live stock, were a source of severest distress; there were eight hundred cases before the Court of Requests for adjudication in one single week; a circumstance quite unparalleled. The crops, and other agricultural matters, were in the meanwhile neglected, so great was the difficulty of procuring the necessary labour. A gentleman was about to proceed to the Indian Isles and China, to procure labourers on commission."

Captain Fitzroy, in the very excellent account which he and his fellow voyagers have published, thus notices this colony in 1836: –

"It is difficult to believe that Sydney will continue to flourish in proportion to its rise. It has sprung into existence too suddenly. Convicts have forced its growth, even as a hot-bed forces plants, and premature decay may be expected from such early maturity." (Like the effect of its climate on the human frame.) "Other rising colonies have advantages in point of situation and climate, which the country about Sydney does not possess; and if our government establishment should be withdrawn, from that day the decline of the city would commence, because its natural advantages are not sufficient to enable

"it to compete with other places in those regions, excepting while fostered by the presence of regularly paid government officers, troops, and a large convict establishment. There must be great difficulty in bringing up a family well in that country, in consequence of the demoralizing influence of convict servants, to which almost all children must be more or less exposed." (They will get drunk, while the patient they are waiting on has the death-rattle in his throat; and will endeavour to perform the ablutions of the dead, while they are too unsteady to stand over the corpse.) "Besides, literature is at a low ebb; most people are anxious about active farming, or commercial pursuits," or waiting on auctions to buy as opportunity presents, "which leave little leisure for reflection, or for reading more than those fritterers of the mind – daily newspapers and ephemeral trash. Another evil in the social system of Sydney and its vicinity, is the rancorous feeling which exists between the descendants of free settlers and the children of convicts. Fatal, indeed, would it be to the former, if the arm of power were removed; for their high principles and good feelings would be no match for the wiles and atrocities of such abandoned outcasts as are there congregated, and almost rejoice in their iniquity. Money is gained by such people by any and every means, save those of honest industry. – By

"selling spirits, frequently drugged – by theft – by receiving and selling stolen goods – by the wages ,c of iniquity – and by exorbitant usury" (chargeable to other colonies besides the penal settlements), "fortunes have been amassod there in a few years, which would make an honest man's hair stand on end."

"But do such men enjoy their wealth?" (Yes they have become animals.) "Does it benefit them or their children? No; their life is a miserable scene of anxiety, care, fear, and general penuriousness; they die without a friend and without hope." Ay, then, as I have witnessed, comes the pinch, for life must be all selfishness – religion is not in that mind. Now let us turn to Mr. Darwin's account, co-voyager with the gallant captain. Mr. Darwin exposes very quick powers of observation: – "This day we experienced the sirocco-like wind of Australia, which comes from the parched deserts of the interior. Clouds of dust were travelling in every direction; and the wind felt like that which has passed over a fire. I afterwards heard that the thermometer out of doors stood at 119 degrees; and in a room in a closed house, at 96 degrees. The rapid prosperity and future prospects of this colony are to me, not understanding these subjects, very puzzling. The two main exports are wool and whale-oil; and to both of these productions there is a limit. The country is totally unfit for canals; therefore, there is a line not very distant, beyond which the land

carriage of wool will not repay the expense of shearing and tending sheep. Pasture everywhere is so thin, that settlers have already pushed far into the interior: moreover, the country further in land becomes extremely poor. I have before said that agriculture can never succeed on a very extended scale; therefore, so far as I can see, Australia must ultimately depend upon being the centre of commerce for the southern hemisphere, and perhaps on her future manufactories."

To compete with home, in aid of her commerce?

"Possessing coal, she always has the moving power at hand. From the habitable country extending along the coast, and from her English extraction, she is sure to be a maritime nation. I formerly imagined that Australia would rise to be as grand and powerful as North America; but now it appears to me such future grandeur is rather problematical."

Now, why have I given this detail of New South Wales? because to her Legislative Council, composed of interests connected with her, fixed to her soil, to those who had, on the starting of South Australia, exposed jealous feelings, even so far as to commit their own well-doing, to those interests was assigned the directing of the new colony of New Zealand; of which their knowledge devised from their local trade, was still more apt to arouse their jealousy. And what does the first act of their legislation effect? – the

stoppage of all speculation, then much excited to it; throwing a doubt on all titles to land, and assigning to a distant day, not fixed, all resolution of that doubt so that the residents, not knowing what may be assigned to them, or what may be taken from them, hesitate to make ventures in trade, and place a limit to their transactions; while the capitalist, who had come there from other quarters, finds the scenes on which he had thought a new light had been thrown, are all suddenly obscured. He knows not how he can safely secure an investment; sells his goods in haste to prevent the losses of delay; and wends his way back again, whence he came. At the same time, no benefit accrues to the local government from those measures; her expenses are great, and many sources of revenue are driven from her shores. Even the officers sent are connected with local interests in New South Wales – were, appointed by Sir George Gipps. In this way the colonization has been checked; and when a stream has been diverted from its course, you cannot always ensure the same body of water returning to its channel. Many imagined that the Governor and a Commission might at once have investigated all titles, and adjudicated upon them; that the certificate of title might have produced revenue, a revenue that would have been immediately and most cheerfully paid. Trade would have flowed on, and presented a larger

body, whence the government might derive support, and would sooner have been in a situation to forward colonization – one matter required in justice to the Mow-ree, for the concession he has made.

Released from this primary embarrassment, in attending to which, he would, however, have gained an insight into the country and people over whom he was to preside, the Governor could have devoted his attention sooner to the protection of the natives. In many parts they have been reckless of their own interests in the land, and being permitted by the old purchasers to reside on and plant the same as before they sold it – they did not feel the error they were too frequently led into. This is one duty the representative of the English crown ought instantly to attend to.

The last object, but by no means the least, important to be attended to, or that may be delayed, is the instruction of the native. For this purpose there already exist schools and teachers throughout the country, under a direction most intimately acquainted with the customs and talents of the native; this object will come within the presidency of the Bishop, a functionary strange alike to the native and his habits; and who cannot until after, at least, a year's residence among them, be equal to the task. The direction will, however, be improved by a man of rank and talent, who has the enthusiasm necessary, and is better

in the country, and not distant, as it has been in England, having till now been in the committees of missionary societies.

It would have been as well to have investigated the character and qualifications of the missionaries, fully to understand the most effective way of placing superiors over those who must be most qualified to direct and minister religion in that country, and in such manner, as the duties of the crown to the native require those offices should be performed. Could it be supposed that body would act, on feeling any measure offensive to them – they are influential, and would be, if capable of such feeling, very embarrassing to deal with. Had an individual, attaching to himself all that influence possessed by the missionaries, thought fit to practise the natives in the use of the rifle, and then prompted them to assert their independence, we, or any other nation, would have found the reduction of the country a tedious, expensive, and most probably (considering its position on the globe) an impracticable matter. Divided and simple, the Mow-ree does not understand the necessity of combination; ancient feuds and jealousies also having sway over him. I would presume to hint on the possibility of amalgamating the Mow-ree with our people. There is, in the native population, a large amount of labour; a great desideratum, failing which, no colony, nor capital applied to a colony, will succeed. At present we do not derive much from it;

would it not avail to change a system, continued now so long, which has failed to secure that labour? It must be an object to identify the native with ourselves, as perfectly as possible; his own interests of trade, and improvement, would be thereby attended to; he would sooner understand our customs; and be more protected against the fraudulent of our community. And this might be effected by teaching him English, instead of his own language, either by the local teachers, and all those appliances ready on the spot; or by inducing him to send his youth to England, where they might be educated and trained as their circumstances required: it would upset many continuing attachments, which still bind him to ancient errors and superstitions. He is both apt in acquiring, and desirous to acquire the knowledge of our language. Would it not also guard him against foreign influences, which might be practised to separate him from our dominion? Denationalizing in so gentle a manner, would take from the pain of that moment, when the mind might awake to the pride of national distinction. Another matter necessary to be heeded is, that his numbers are on the decline; and he would, by a knowledge of our tongue, be better guarded against those vices which specially lead to that decline.

The moral state of a community is no light assistance to its progression; in this respect there is a want in colonial society yet to be supplied. Might not an improved state be formed, by giving to the

resident capitalist some interest in his government. The delinquencies exposed at elections at home, may indicate that the community is apt, in some of its members, to be debased by the use of the elective franchise; but it by no means proves that the mass is not elevated by having a voice in its government. Perhaps it would be as well, and, in the end, as inexpensive, to the mother country, to increase the salaries of the principal officials, forbidding them to acquire any property in the country, while the subordinate departments might be held only by those connected with residents having vested interests in the colony. The institution of municipal government in the towns, appears more loudly called for in New Zealand, where communication is remote, than almost any other country; it is a popular way of diminishing the expenses of government; a more effective protection to local trade; and a better informant to government, than any other body or power could be.

I would next notice the importance of emigration as a drain to super-population, and the distresses caused by temporary stagnations of trade at home. To render it effective, however, there is a great necessity for an emigration department, immediately connected with the Home Government, under able and competent direction, charged as to informing the emigrant, and mindful of his interests on landing; and I think recent experiments fully prove the folly

of expecting any efforts of colonization to thrive, when two directing powers are permitted. The Home Government ought not to delegate, to permit any other influence but its own, excepting those resident. I feel assured that no colony can flourish, removed from the direction of the Home Government. The land speculations in North America succeed, for one reason, that they are never separated from their source. It is possible to communities, as to individuals, to give sudden and startling proofs of wealth, as long as capital is poured in upon them. Societies and companies, formed at home, may raise a fever for some distant part of the globe, on information they may not be competent to analyze; and on the strength of names and compilations of remarks and opinions formed by casual visitors to the new land, may draw such a torrent of interest to their recommended colony, as at once to create for it a capital: and so long as the capital flows into it, the colony must appear to succeed; but if that capital be not sufficient to carry on expenses until they can be borne by the colonists, then bankruptcy and disaster ensue, for which those are responsible who have induced to the emigration, as also the government who permit it.

Before settlers are induced to emigrate, the country ought to be properly explored and surveyed; and no settlement permitted, until the report is received from those deputed to those duties, that they have

performed them; nor should monopolies be fostered, unless for a limited period, at the outset of a colony, and with an assured capital, completely sufficient to carry them through, to the object they seek. They are certain, in their management, to expose the settlers to petty tyrannies, which the combination of capital is too strong to resist. In hardly any instance do they act up to their engagements, meeting remonstrances by apologies for circumstances, or errors in some remote individual made their scapegoat.

The Home Government will be preferring the interests of companies to those of the public, if it sanctions the sale of land by those companies in England, while its representatives on the spot are examining the equity of the purchase; and deciding what extent of acreage, the payments made, will fairly entitle the party to claim. Although the respectability of the names connected with one company (the New Zealand Land Company) cannot be impugned, they should themselves consider, that wherever the gain of profit is possible, either to the projectors, or those employed by them, by whose reports the projectors are evidently guided, their statements may be regarded with suspicion, and the more so when they offer their titles in the markets, at a time they are not certain how those titles may be affected by pending investigations – investigations which the English Government is bound in honour to the native to make, although the correctness of the

incipient policy cannot be approved as having augmented the numbers, or revenue, of the colony. That policy should put all upon their guard at present; caution is called for in buying titles to land. If any titles are safe, those of the company should be pre-eminently so; but how do we, in England, know what counter-claims, dated years back, may be preferred in New Zealand, to land the company may here be offering for sale?

The intending emigrant must bear well in mind, that when he has once sailed over the line, the time in retracing his steps is attended with enormous expenses; the expenses of return very much exceeding those of embarkation. If, indeed, he would come back in quest of justice, let him understand, that the washing of the ocean may diminish the largest rock, but not the expenses of LAW.

The exact rate at which he must buy land, should be known to the emigrant; its real value to him depends on his having available labour; and that he can make adequate returns for his capital. On his calculations, previous to embarking, depend his future happiness; he will bitterly feel the consequences of rushing into uncertainties, into which I regret that the incomplete information of the day has led too many, who had "better have endured the evils that they had, than have tied to those they knew not of."

Recommended to read numerous works, until he has to analyze theories, to which their reading ia-

troduces him, without enabling him to make the correct calculations, which most should interest him; he is pleased with the talented compilations over which he pores; his attention cleverly distracted from proper reflections; and the needful calculations are omitted.

Heavy disappointments, coming upon those who have broken up their old establishments at home, and who, in returning, waste so much of their capital, as to be unable to re-assume their position in society, too often form the drunkard, the beggar, and even the suicide; over whose graves those, who had inveigled by their writings, should shudder, and feel their "withers were unstrung."

Pleading against delusion, I by no means seek to deter from emigration; merely exposing the unfitness of present prospects, wishing to excite alike the intending emigrant, and the promoter of emigration, to the removal of those impediments, which now oppose the emigrant's success. In every way convinced that emigration, systematically conducted, under the eye of the Home Government, is a happy drain for the distresses of the old country, and may land the squalid pauper as an able-bodied labourer in a region, where the rigours and the destitution of a pauper's winter would be happily and equally distant; his wants abroad contributing to the commerce of his father-land. I venture to assert, that distant emigration must

be encouraged through the medium, chiefly, of the lower classes. If capitalists are left to themselves, it will not matter, or their speculations furthered, only as they may promote public good. The Government (hitherto the first establishment of colonies having proved an expense to it) may induce labourers to settle, when assured of the practibility of a new country; and place them so that they may obtain a home and necessaries for themselves and families, without giving them opportunities of becoming landowners, otherwise than by the products of their own labour. Wherever a community of labour exists, thence will arise trade, and attractions to the capitalist. The first settlers in New Zealand were men without a farthing; from their residence, its trade arose to its present importance. As I have said, the value of the land is immaterial; may be sufficient if its price will repay expenses of sale and conveyance of labourers, and by its price or extent excluding all but those who have capital to work it.

I fancy one great objection to the theories of the day, is fostering a herd of absentee landholders, who are sooner tired of spending money on a distant land, than a resident would be. Another, that whilst they decry at home, land being in the hands of labourers, in the colonies they tempt him in every way to become a land-holder at high rates, before he has a capital sufficient to work it.

A separate commission was last year issued for New

Zealand; and Captain Hobson is now Governor of those islands.

In my account of the natives, I have omitted to describe their peculiar modes of salutation, and lamentation, also their mode of cooking, frequently alluded to in this work as "their ovens."

When old friends or relatives meet, after long absence, they grasp the hand and press their noses together, either at their extremities or bridges, at the same time they commence a low whining and crying, which continues according to the feeling or humour of the moment. Friends returning from absence are greeted, as their waka-ras, i.e. their sails, are seen from the pah, by a general turn out of the inhabitants, who begin waving their garments, and shouting "Arry-mi!" (come hither.) On landing they squat on their haunches, and commence the crying – the only whine they have for a guest. When relatives die, they sit whole days crying, and also score their faces and bodies with shells until the blood flows freely, which they allow to cake upon the skin, as testifying the compliment they have rendered; this brutal scoring is also done to greet friends by the very old ones. They had formerly a method of taking out the brains of those fallen in battle, and of preserving the head and face entire, with the skin on, looking as in life, except the dull film of death covering the eyes. Many mariners made a trade with them for these relics,

and it "was feared tribes often went to war to procure a supply for barter. Government interfered, and put a stop to the horrid trade.

The New Zealanders cook their food – meat, fish, or vegetables, separate or together, in the following manner: – they dig a hole, and nearly fill it with pebbles and large stones; on these they light a fire, which, as soon as the stones are thoroughly heated, they remove; they then place the food, previously washed, to be cooked upon the heated stones; they cover the food with segs damped, and shovel the earth upon it, so as to prevent any steam escaping. The food will be cooked in nearly forty minutes. This mode makes the oven of the New Zealander.

They have been used to bury the bodies of their dead in the earth; and to dry them and leave them on tabooed ground, hung between trees, till time has mingled them with the soil. On my grounds I met with a cask, with only its rim above the soil, in which I found a skeleton. The ground was fenced off and tabooed, and though time had decayed the fence, and only bones were left, the ground was still held sacred.

The folly and expense of burying the corpse in any country is, I think, very evident. All our purposes of sepulture would be answered, by consuming the corpse; and, as the ancients did, collecting the ashes, to be preserved at home, or in churches, while the health of the living would be promoted, by escaping the effluvias of decomposition.

21 Bell's.

CHAPTER IX. FOR THE EMIGRANT.

CHAPTER IX.

FOR THE EMIGRANT.

HAVING exerted myself to prevent my countrymen injudiciously supplying the deficiencies of New Zealand, by adding to the number of her flats; I now approach my final labours in behalf of the intending emigrant, hoping he may create fertile lands out of my wastes of ink and paper, which I do most earnestly trust may prove to him, in this work, the fluid of intelligence and carrier of information.

The emigrant, having conned over page 173, satisfied as to his prospects, and determined to invest his capital, should land as free of goods, and full of cash, as his circumstances permit; to avoid expenses, which bring no profit, and entail embarrassment; I advise the month of April or May to be selected for sailing. In New Zealand, and the other colonies, the markets are glutted with English goods; you can purchase out there most articles necessary for your comfort, and even luxury, at a less cost than yours taken from England would amount to, considering the trouble, and risk of purchasing here,

the expenses and nuisances arising from carriage, porterage, clearing the customs, freight, insurance or risk by sea, bad stowage, salt water (even when insured), and the landing; above all, carriage and warehousing in the new country – a long list of evils.

Particular books, or instruments, and machines, as wheat-mill, &c. which, with all the necessary sieves, is indispensable, and machines for winnowing and thrashing, are best procured in London; if seeds are taken out, the rarer kinds alone should be sought, properly packed, and hermetically sealed.

The outfit should consist only of clothes needed for the voyage – let females take one half to make up on board; dress will be, of course, according to the notions of the settler, to whose advantage it will be to confine those notions.

The next point is the ship, and its comforts; space and height are desiderata at sea; a moral and intelligent captain and officers should be sought for; they dispel the discomforts of voyaging, especially where young females are taken or sent; great depravities are chargeable to seamen afloat, not properly controlled and looked after. In ships you will meet with men among the crew as bad, and as practised in deception, as any errant females; and their propensities are hidden by exterior observances, not easily penetrated by those unused to the ways of the ocean. Correctness in the officers is the only corrective.

It would be an improvement to passengers if they

could agree with the owners of their vessel, in the same manner as charters are effected, stipulating for the payment to be made, one half on embarking, and the remainder on dropping anchor in the harbour they are bound to, on the contract having been duly observed; being careful to contract for the safe landing of self and family and goods in the ship's boats. That contract should be minute, and clearly written out, and signed by the owners and captain before the money is paid; fully understanding what diet you are to expect, and inserting that in your specification.

I will briefly hint as to diet at sea: – The inactive life which passengers generally lead on board a ship is hurtful to the body; owing to the difference in the air, to its extreme purity, what is commonly termed its bracing qualities, that inactivity is not followed by the same bad effects which would result on shore from a similar neglect of exercise. The air we breathe is also, in small quantities, imbibed into the stomach, pregnant with salutary or other influences, according to its state of purity. At sea, the air renovates; acting, at times, adversely, on irritable temperaments, as the effect of vinous or other stimulants on the stomach of a child unaccustomed to their use. When, in pure air, we are not able to take our accustomed exercise, we should endeavour to adapt our diet, so as not to induce that state of body requiring much exercise in aid of the function of

digestion. Sea air disposes to scurvy, requiring impure or salt provisions to develope that disease; the tendency increasing in an equal ratio with the impurity of the articles of diet. When the meat is sound, and recently salted; when any other food, used at the same time, is free from mould, or taint of any kind, it is possible, in a well aired ship, free from continued damp, to remain afloat for a long period, without producing bad effects; hence we perceive a general necessity of consuming at sea provisions of a sound, good quality, and not aged; further, we may observe the need, in every way possible, of substituting artificial exercise, and of being cautious not to overload digestion.

Immoderate use of spirituous, and fermented drinks, will be likely to land a person in bad health; most probably produce the germs of disease, under which his frame will wither to the grave.

The first inconvenience you experience on embarking, is occasioned by the confined space assigned to you, which you will do well to guard against, in the selection of your ship, and stowage of your chests and packages. I always recommend that a narrow space should be left between the ship's side and the berth, where a berth is used to sleep in, instead of a cot; to many greatly preferable. The boards on which your mattress is laid, should be adjusted as to admit of being removed; also at the sides, the top boards should slide, so as to be elevated

when needed, to guard you against excessive rolling of the vessel. Your packages should be well and strongly cleeted, in such positions as that they do not crowd you, while they are easy of access; all packages not needed to be referred to during the voyage, should be passed to the mate, for stowage in the-hold; pointing out to him the most perishable. It is as well, to keep your things free from wet, to have them raised a little off the deck, so that you may avoid having your things wetted on any accidental sloppings, or entrance of water in your cabin. A small tarpaulin, suspended by three hooks to the deck, above your berth, with its ends fastened to the four uprights of your berth-place, inclining downwards from its centre, as a roof, would save your bed-clothing being damped by any accidental leakage in the deck. In attending on the sick at sea, I have often been embarrassed in my treatment by a damp state of the bed-clothing.

The less glass and crockeryware used in the cabin, the better; articles of metal are to be preferred.

The discomfort which, next waits upon you, is the sea-sickness; the method the ocean adopts with those taking their first sail to search the stomach; until you have cleared her customs, you are miserable. You must always strive against it as much as possible; sleeping in the air when you are able, and the weather permits. When the vomiting is excessive, and you feel weakened, repair to your berth, lie on your right

side, and covering your eyes, remain quiet. While the least movement continues the vomiting, you should stay there; but against mere nausea you should manfully contend. You must by no means refrain from food, yet avoid to overload the stomach; the stomach, indisposed to all food, should not be allowed to remain more than the first twelve hours without it; nourishment should then be taken, even if it returns; the regular action of the system is on no account to be neglected; vinegar and cologne applied moderately to the temples and lips relieve faintness, especially the former. Brandy and porter judiciously given will also restore the system; green tea, strong coffee, salt meats, butter, cheese, pies and puddings, are best avoided; farinaceous foods cooked as solids, and liquids, with a slight admixture of sugar, egg, and brandy, should be substituted. If after much vomiting the stomach craves for any one particular thing, it may be taken.

The nostrums used are all of no avail – do more harm than good. I have not myself tried the remedy proposed so publicly by the late Mr. Mathews (comedian), that of attaching a mass of pork-fat to a long string, by means of which, the patient is enabled to fathom the troubled deeps within him. I would, however, recommend any one inclining to its use, to apply to one of the crew, who will be ready enough to assist in such a case with a humane alacrity.

Salt meat, excepting bacon, at breakfast, is also in

my opinion objectionable; the food containing the largest quantum of nourishment in the smallest bulk is to be preferred; – -potatoes, rice, arrow-root, are necessary diet; eggs, packed in oil, orange-marmalade milk, recently preserved, in small tins; biscuits, also in small tins; sago, or tapioca, and chocolate-paste; should be taken with families as private stores: the use of marmalade, especially where there are children, is extremely salutary, and butter the reverse. Much wheaten flower in the diet, I deem bad for the younger ones. It is not safe for families at sea to be without castor oil.

The occasional use of lime-juice when salt provisions are consumed, is beneficial and not to be omitted; and I recommend cider if it can be conveniently stowed. Half a pint per diem will do good; and to children it may be occasionally given mixed with water. You will of course assure yourself as to what may be put on board for ship's stock; supplying, for your own use of the above, such as are not likely to be furnished by the ship. I need not enjoin frequent ablutions, but I may the frequent airing of your bedding, and removing soiled linen from your cabin.

The next discomfort will be the state of the water; prefer ships having iron tanks. If you have a family, take with you a filter, and be anxious as to the number of filters for the ship's use. Keep in your cabin a keg of a size to hold water for your wants; frequently scalding it on the voyage.

Water is the frequent cause of diarrhoea and dysentery, the latter often fatal to children at sea. When the water is tainted, let it be boiled before you, or at least before children drink it.

After crossing the line, and steering to the southward, you may expect a decrease of temperature, accompanied perhaps with rain; mind the decrease be not very rapid upon you before you clothe with flannel, particularly children; and if you can, next the skin.

Prefer calico to linen next the skin for sea stock. Clothes in the Colony are as at home, except that you should provide, what at home would be, an excess of summer apparel.

Oil is to be preferred to tallow, wax to both, to give light in your cabin. Early hours essential. There is a general tendency to irritability in voyagers. The monotony, confined space, and sea-air, all tend to this; if you do not keep a guard upon yourself, a trifle blazes into contention and strife, and your comforts may be utterly destroyed. At once check improprieties in others, by quietly calling the captain's attentions to them. All officers should have a deference paid to them. You must make up your mind to many discomforts; and the less you grumble, the less the evil. Having satisfied yourself about the ship's and the officers' qualities, never apprehend danger until they, or rather the captain, tells you of it, avoiding to put troublesome questions at a time when attention may

be required by their duties. There are more dangers of sea made than met with, comparing casualties with the numbers afloat; persons new to the sea, when they are surrounded with "the blue above and the blue below," should trust to Providence.

If he possess opportunities, the settler should take out letters, requesting for him disinterested advice. On landing, let him either seek to hire rooms, or for a day or two lodge bis family at an inn; being careful to keep the weather-eye open, as now he will be surrounded by squalls, particularly if carrying too much sail on the purse; his means should not appear; if he has references, and can depend on those who may have given them to him, let him not credit any tales they do not confirm. As it may be possible to detain his family on board until he has found rooms, which he can hire per week, that plan would be the best; if not, seek an inn; in any case, let him be careful to have written contracts for the supplies and accommodation to be furnished to him, and the amount he is to pay for them, before he ventures to sit down.

Having lodged his family, let him inquire the news of the place, reflecting well on what he hears; then seek his location, and that not too hastily. When determined, if natives are in his neighbourhood, let him contract with them through the medium of an old resident, to construct securely fences and buildings, by piece-work, for lodging his family, goods, tools, and

stock; making the buildings as small as he can possibly away with, on account of the expense; he will then return to his family, and proceed to buy his provisions, stock, seed, and implements; the quantity to be regulated by the price, facilities of conveyance, and proximity to a settlement. He must contract for the conveyance; and all proceed in company with the goods to his location, not forgetting to carry with him tobacco and pipes for the natives. Then to work; and may speedy profits attend upon his spade!

It would be a great desideratum for settlers to emigrate together to locations, in numbers of not less than six families; they could purchase a location more cheaply together; have the purchase surveyed and laid out, so that their residences might be fixed within easy distances of one another. The additional expense might be £5: this should be ascertained. They would not need to proceed with joint-stock operations, but might, the land divided, go on with each his own speculation. They would preserve to themselves the comforts of society, not being too near, so as to be exposed to contentions about trifles. They would feel less of the change from home to the wilderness, and could act in concert when evil might be threatened, as did the first and more recent settlers in America; nor would they be obliged to consort with those whose ways and principles they might object to. A concerted scheme would diminish many expenses, perhaps save many miseries.

Settlers frequently fail from having too many irons in the fire, or useless expenses, or impatience, clutching immediately at the products of time. If a small capitalist, at the end of five years, is able to clothe and feed his family, has kept out of debt at the onset, and at the end of that period calls everything around him his own, he may then begin to lay by, steadily keeping on one course, avoiding companies which are generally speculations of a gambling nature. Confining himself to the increase of his cultivations and stock, or of his trade and its stock; without looking to direct companies for facilitating communications with the moon, hunting whales on icebergs, or building bridges across to South America. Let him avoid land-jobbing as he would the grog-shop; or the ways of that Shade whose presence he fears not, but whose principles he abhors. – Vale!

J. BRIGHT.

ADDENDA.

ADDENDA.

THERE are now in the Pacific vast congregations of our countrymen, with whom the mother country has enjoyed, till lately, a profitable commerce.

Their prospects are now clouded, for want of labour to work capital; a want which has been supplied to the majority of them by the vice and crimes of home. In affording that supply, the reform of the convict was found to be checked, and immorality was promoted – hence the change; no assignment of convicts, to labour for the free, is made, that neither may be deteriorated by the admixture; at the same time, the free are impoverished, and the trade of home restricted, if not wholly perilled.

Can no scheme be devised by which the criminal may, on his first delinquency, be separated from the mass, and his moral state having been improved, as a convict, he may evince that improvement before he acquires perfect freedom; at the same time assisting in his own maintenance, and repaying back to society at home the wrong he has done, by aiding in the increase of her commerce?

Suppose that all convict females serve their time on an island remote from male society, and their minds, directed to the study of good, are prevented deriving errors from others, while the regulation of diet, which has great power in the formation of the mind (hence the use of fasts and abstinence, as enjoined of old, and practised by the Redeemer), assists in restoring or forming a healthy tone of morality.

It is, in fact, the silent system, until such change of mind is effected. But this change being seen, there should be a period of probation, and the errant individual not again returned to society till the recovery is decided.

Females being thus guided, and guarded apart from men, let the same system be applied to the men, but let their probation be, after being subjected to the solitary system and education the while, in their assignment as labourers, during a term by which commerce, the government, and free settler, may all be benefited. To the growth of wool, I fear, only, is Australia adapted. That pursuit requires a low rate of labour. – -If Australia be worth considering, how shall that rate be best effected?

On another subject I would add a question. – Uniformity of price may be well; is it equally good policy that the increased value of districts, by settling, should be pocketed by individuals, and lost to the government, when, by increase of her revenues, she might lessen the burden of the mass? Should

not the rates of land be affected according to its proximity to population; say, commencing with a town of 1000, increasing per thousand? The extreme districts to be reduced much below the present rate, and no individual being allowed to advertise land to be sold, as a town, unless he has built a certain number of tenements thereon, and has obtained the sanction of the government.

FINIS.

LONDON:

PALMER AND CLAYTON, PRINTERS,

10, Crane-court, Fleet-street.

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