A period of depression began in South Australia after 1882. For a time everything was against the colony. Long droughts killed its sheep and ruined its crops; while the copper mines were found to be worked out. But fortune began to smile again after a few years of dull times, and when in 1887 an exhibition was held in Adelaide to commemorate the jubilee of the colony, it was also the commemoration of the return of brighter prospects. In the growth of wheat and fruits as well as in the making of wine South Australia has great openings for future prosperity.

CHAPTER XXI.

1. The Land Act.—Sir John Young became Governor of New South Wales in 1861. He was a man of great talent; but, at this stage of the colony’s history, the ability of the Governor made very little difference in the general progress of affairs. The political power was now chiefly in the hands of responsible Ministers, and without their advice the Governor could do nothing. The Ministry of the period—headed by Charles Cowper and John Robertson—prepared a bill to alter the regulations for the sale of land, and to give to the poor man an opportunity of obtaining a small farm on easy terms. Any person who declared his readiness to live on his land, and to cultivate it, was to be allowed to select a portion, not exceeding a certain size, in any part of the colony which he thought most convenient. The land was not to be given gratuitously; but, although the selector was to pay for it at the rate of one pound per acre, yet he was not expected to give more than a quarter of the price on taking possession. Three years afterwards he had the option of either paying at once for the remaining three-quarters, or, if this were beyond his means, of continuing to hold the land at a yearly rental of one shilling an acre. This was an excellent scheme for the poorer class of farmers; but it was not looked upon with favour by the squatters, whose runs were only rented from the State, and were, therefore, liable, under this new Act, to be invaded by selectors, who would pick out all the more fertile portions, break up the runs in an awkward manner, and cause many annoyances.

Hence, though the Legislative Assembly passed the bill, the Upper House, whose members were mostly squatters, very promptly rejected it; and upon this there arose a struggle, the Ministry being determined to carry the bill, and the Council quite as resolute never to pass it. Acting on the advice of his Ministers, Sir John Young entreated the Upper House to give way; but it was deaf to all persuasions, and the Ministers determined to coerce it by adopting extreme measures. Its members had been nominated by a previous Governor for a period of five years, as a preliminary trial before the nominations for life; the term of their appointment was now drawing to a close, and Sir John Young, by waiting some little time, might easily have appointed a new Council of his own way of thinking. But the Ministers were impatient to have their measure passed, and, instead of waiting, they advised the Governor to nominate twenty-one new members of Council, who, being all supporters of the bill, would give them a majority in the Upper House; so that, on the very last night of its existence, it would be obliged to pass the measure and make it law. But when the opponents of the bill saw the trick which was being played upon them, they rose from their seats and resigned in a body. The President himself vacated his chair; and as no business could then be carried on, the Land Bill was delayed until the Council came to an end, and the Ministers thus found themselves outwitted. They were able, somewhat later, to effect their purpose; but this little episode in responsible government caused considerable stir at the time, and Sir John subsequently received a rebuke from the Colonial Secretary for his share in it.

2. Prince Alfred.—In 1868 Lord Belmore became Governor of New South Wales, and during his term of office all the colonies passed through a period of excitement on the occasion of a visit from the Queen’s second son, Prince Alfred. He was the first of the Royal Family who had ever visited Australia, and the people gave to him a hearty and enthusiastic reception. As he entered the cities flower-decked arches spanned the streets; crowds of people gathered by day to welcome him, and at night the houses and public buildings were brilliantly illuminated in his honour. But during the height of the festivities at Sydney a circumstance occurred which cast a gloom over the whole of Australia. The Prince had accepted an invitation to a picnic at Clontarf, and was walking quietly on the sands to view the various sports of the holiday-makers, when a young man named O’Farrell rushed forward and discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his back, and he fell dangerously wounded. For a day or two his life trembled in the balance, and the colonists awaited the result with the greatest excitement, until it was made known that the crisis was past. No reason was alleged for the crime except a blind dislike to the Royal Family; and O’Farrell was subsequently tried and executed.

3. Railway Construction.—New South Wales has three main lines of railway with many branches. One starts from Sydney, and passes through Goulburn to Albury on its way to Melbourne; one goes north to Newcastle, then through the New England district, and so to Brisbane; and the third runs from Sydney over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, and away to Bourke, on the Darling River. Those rugged heights, which so long opposed the westward progress of the early colonists, have proved no insuperable barrier to the engineer; and the locomotive now slowly puffs up the steep inclines and drags its long line of heavily-laden trucks where Macquarie’s road, with so much trouble, was carried in 1815. The first difficulty which had to be encountered was at a long valley named Knapsack Gully. Here the rails had to be laid on a great viaduct, where the trains run above the tops of the tallest trees. The engineers had next to undertake the formidable task of conducting the line up a steep and rocky incline, seven hundred feet in height. This was effected by cutting a “zigzag” in the rock; the trains run first to the left, rising upon a slight incline; then, reversing, they go to the right, still mounting slightly upwards; then, again, to the left; and so on till the summit is reached. By these means the short distance is rendered long, but the abrupt steepness of the hill is reduced to a gentle inclination. The trains afterwards run along the top of the ridge, gradually rising, till, at the highest point, they are three thousand five hundred feet above the level of the Sydney station. The passengers look down from the mountain tops on the forest-clad valleys far below; they speed along vast embankments or dash through passages cut in the solid rock, whose sides tower above them to the height of an ordinary steeple. In some places long tunnels were bored, so that the trains now enter a hill at one side and emerge from the other.

One of these tunnels was thought to be unsafe; the immense mass of rock above it seemed likely to crush downwards upon the passage, and the engineers thought that their best course would be to remove the hill from above it. Three and a half tons of gunpowder were placed at intervals in the tunnel, and connected by wires with a galvanic battery placed a long distance off. The operation of firing the mine was made a public occasion, and Lady Belmore agreed to go up to the mountains and perform the ceremony of removing the hill. When all was ready, she touched the knob which brought the two ends of the wire together. A dull and rumbling sound was heard, the solid rock heaved slowly upward, and then settled back to its place, broken in a thousand pieces, and covered with rolling clouds of dust and smoke. All that the workmen had then to do was to carry away the immense pile of stone, and the course was clear for laying the rails.

When the line reached the other side of the Blue Mountains there were great difficulties in the descent, and here the engineers had to lay out zigzags of greater extent than the former. By these the trains now descend easily and safely from the tops of the mountains down into the Lithgow Valley far below.

4. Sydney Exhibition.—So on every hand the colony made progress. Her railways expanded in scores of branches; her telegraph lines stretched out their arms in every direction; her sheep increased so that now there are nearly sixty millions of them; her wheat and maize extended to more than half a million of acres; her orangeries and vineyards and orchards, her mines of coal and tin, and her varied and extensive manufactures, make her people, now numbering a million, one of the most prosperous on the face of the earth. Her pride was pardonable when, in 1879, she held an international exhibition to compare her industries side by side with those of other lands, so as to show how much she had done and to discover how much she had yet to learn. A frail, but wonderfully pretty building rapidly arose on the brow of the hill between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove; and that place, the scene of so much squalor and misery a hundred years before, became gay with all that decorative art could do, and busy with daily throngs of gratified visitors. The place had a most distinguished appearance; seen from the harbour, its dome and fluttering flags rose up from among the luxuriant foliage of the Botanic Gardens, as if boldly to proclaim that New South Wales had completed the period of her infancy and was prepared to take her place among the nations as one grown to full and comely proportions. When the building had served its purpose, the people were too fond and too proud of it to dismantle and destroy it, but unfortunately it was not long after swept away by an accidental fire.

In 1885, the colony was stirred by a great wave of enthusiasm when it was known that its Government had sent to England the offer of a regiment of soldiers to fight in the Soudan side by side with British troops. The offer was accepted, and some seven or eight hundred soldiers, well equipped and full of high hopes, sailed for Africa. The war was too soon over for them to have any chance of displaying what an Australian force may be like upon a battle-field. There were many persons who held that the whole expedition was a mistake. But it had one good effect; for it showed that, for the present at least, the Australian colonies are proud of their mother-country; that their eyes are fondly turned to her, to follow all her destinies in that great career which she has to accomplish as the leading nation of the earth; and that if ever she needed their help, assistance would flow spontaneously from the fulness of loving hearts. The idea of this expedition and its execution belonged principally to C. B. Dalley. But the great leader of New South Wales during the last quarter of a century, and the most zealous worker for its welfare and prosperity, has been the veteran statesman Sir Henry Parkes.

CHAPTER XXII.

1. Responsible Government.—In 1855, when each of the colonies was engaged in framing for itself its own form of government, Victoria, like all the others, chose the English system of two Houses of Legislature. At first it was resolved that the Lower House, called the Legislative Assembly, should consist of only sixty members; but by subsequent additions, the number has been increased to eighty-six: in 1857 the right of voting was conferred upon every man who had resided a sufficient length of time in the colony. With regard to the Upper House Victoria found the same difficulty as had been experienced in New South Wales; but, instead of introducing the system of nomination by the Government, it decided that its Legislative Council should be elected by the people. In order, however, that this body might not be identical in form and opinion with the Lower House, it was arranged that no one should be eligible for election to it who did not possess at least five thousand pounds worth of real property, and that the privilege of voting should be confined to the wealthier part of the community.

Along with this new Constitution responsible government was introduced; and Mr. Haines, being sent for by the Governor, formed the first Ministry. Before the close of the year, the first contest under the new system took place. Mr. Nicholson, a member of the Assembly, moved that the voting for elections should in future be carried on in secret, by means of the ballot-box, so that every man might be able to give his opinion undeterred by any external pressure, such as the fear of displeasing his employer or of disobliging a friend. The Government of Mr. Haines refused its assent to this proposal, which was, nevertheless, carried by the Assembly. Now, the system of responsible government required that, in such a case, Mr. Haines and his fellow-Ministers, being averse to such a law and declining to carry it out, should resign and leave the government to those who were willing and able to inaugurate the newly-appointed system. Accordingly they gave in their resignations, and the Governor asked Mr. Nicholson to form a new Ministry; but, though many members had voted for his proposal, they were not prepared to follow him as their leader. He could obtain very few associates, and was thus unable to form a Ministry; so that there appeared some likelihood of a total failure of responsible government before it had been six months in existence. In the midst of this crisis Sir Charles Hotham was taken ill. He had been present at a prolonged ceremony—the opening of the first gasworks in Melbourne—and a cold south wind had given him a dangerous chill. He lay for a day or two in great danger; but the crisis seemed past, and he had begun to recover, when news was brought to him of Mr. Nicholson’s failure. He lay brooding over these difficulties, which pressed so much upon his mind that he was unable to rally, and on the last day of the year 1855 he died. This was a great shock to the colonists, who had learnt highly to respect him. The vacant position was for a year assumed by Major-General Macarthur, who invited Mr. Haines and his Ministry to return. They did so, and the course of responsible government began again from the beginning. At the end of 1856 another Governor—Sir Henry Barkly—arrived; and during the seven years of his stay the new system worked smoothly enough, the only peculiarity being the rapid changes in the Government. Some of the Ministries lasted only six weeks, and very few protracted their existence to a year.

The colony was filled with vigorous and enterprising men, who had come to it for the purpose of digging for gold. For four or five years gold digging had been on the average a fairly remunerative occupation. But when all the surface gold had been gathered, and it became necessary to dig shafts many hundreds of feet into the earth, and even then in many cases only to get quartz, from which the gold had to be extracted by crushing and careful washing, then the ordinary worker, who had no command of capital, had to take employment with the wealthier people, who could afford to sink shafts and wait for years before the gold appeared. These men, therefore, had to take small wages for toiling at a most laborious occupation. But most of them had learnt trades of some sort in Europe; and the idea sprang up that if the colony prevented boots from coming into it from outside there would be plenty of work for the bootmakers; if it stopped the importation of engines there would no longer be any reason why engineers should work like navvies at the bottom of gold mines—they would be wanted to make the engines of the colony. After a long agitation, therefore, James MʻCulloch, the Premier of the colony, in 1864 brought a bill into the Victorian Legislative Assembly according to which taxes were to be placed on all goods coming into the colony if they were of a sort that might be made within the colony. MʻCulloch proposed to make this change because it was ardently desired by the working men of the colony, and these could by their votes control the action of the Legislative Assembly. But the Upper House, called the Legislative Council, composed of wealthy men, who had been elected by the wealthier part of the community, thought, after careful decision, that any such plan would ruin the commerce of the colony without much benefiting its industries. They therefore rejected the proposed bill.

MʻCulloch tried to persuade them to pass it, but they were obstinate. He then resorted to a trick which is in itself objectionable, but which is perhaps excusable when the great body of the people wish a certain thing and a small body like the Legislative Council are resolved to thwart them. It is part of our constitutional law that all bills dealing with money matters must be prepared in the Lower House; the Upper House can then accept them or reject them as they stand, but is not allowed to alter them.

Now, once a year Parliament has to pass a bill called the Appropriation Act, by which authority is given to the Government to spend the public money in the various ways that Parliament directs. In 1865 MʻCulloch put the whole of the Protective Tariff Bill into the Appropriation Act as if it were a part of that Act, though really it had nothing to do with it. The Legislative Assembly passed the Appropriation Act with this insertion. The Legislative Council now found itself in a most unlucky position. If it passed the Appropriation Act it would also pass the Protective Tariff Bill, which it detested. But if it rejected the Appropriation Act, then the Government would have no authority to pay away any money, and so all the officers of the State, the civil servants and the policemen, the teachers, the gaolers, the surveyors and the tide-waiters, would all have to go on for a year without any salaries. There was no middle course open, for the Council could not alter the Appropriation Act and then pass it.

Whether was it to pass the Act and make the protective tariff the law of the land; or reject it, and run the risk of making a number of innocent people starve? It chose the latter alternative, and threw out the bill. The whole country became immensely excited, and seemed like one debating club, where men argued warmly either for or against the Council.

Matters were becoming serious, when the Ministry discovered an ingenious device for obtaining money. According to British law, if a man is unable to obtain from the Government what it owes him, he sues for it in the Supreme Court; and then, if this Court decides in his favour, it orders the money to be paid, quite independently of any Appropriation Act, out of the sums that may be lying in the Treasury. In their emergency, the Ministry applied to the banks for a loan of money; five of them refused, but the sixth agreed to lend forty thousand pounds. With this the Government servants were paid, and then the bank demanded its money from the Government; but the Government had no authority from Parliament to pay any money, and could not legally pay it. The bank then brought its action at law. The Supreme Court gave its order, and the money was paid to the bank out of the Treasury. Thus a means had been discovered of obtaining all the money that was required without asking the consent of Parliament. Throughout the year 1865 the salaries of officers were obtained in this way; but in 1866 the Upper House, seeing that it was being beaten, offered to hold a conference. Each House made concessions to the other, the Tariff Bill was passed, with some alterations, the Appropriation Bill was then agreed to in the ordinary way, and the “Deadlock” came to an end.

3. The Darling Grant.—But, in its train, other troubles followed; for the English authorities were displeased with Sir Charles Darling for allowing the Government to act as it did. They showed how he might have prevented it, and, to mark their dissatisfaction, they recalled him in 1866. He bitterly complained of this harsh treatment; and the Assembly, regarding him as, in some measure, a martyr to the cause of the people, determined to recompense him for his loss of salary. In the Appropriation Act of 1867 they therefore passed a grant of £20,000 to Lady Darling, intending it for the use of her husband. The Upper House owed no debt of gratitude to Sir Charles, and, accordingly, it once more threw out the Appropriation Bill. Again there was the same bitter dispute, and again the public creditors were obliged to sue for their money in the Supreme Court. In a short time four thousand five hundred such pretended actions were laid, the Government making no defence, and the order being given in each case that the money should be paid.

In 1866 the new Governor—Viscount Canterbury—arrived; but the struggle was still continued, till, in 1868, Sir Charles Darling informed MʻCulloch that Lady Darling would decline to receive the money, as he was receiving instead five thousand pounds as arrears of salary and a lucrative position in England. The Upper House then passed the Appropriation Bill, and the contest came to an end.

4. Payment of Members.—But they had other things to quarrel about. The working men of the colony thought that they never would get fair treatment in regard to the laws until working men were themselves in Parliament. But that could not be, so long as they had to leave their trades and spend their time in making laws while getting nothing for it. Hence they were resolved on having all members of Parliament paid, and they elected persons to the Lower House who were in favour of that principle. But the better-off people sent persons into the Upper House who were against it. Thus for twenty years a struggle took place, but in the end the working men carried their point; and it was settled that every member of Parliament should receive three hundred pounds a year. The two Houses also quarrelled about the manner in which the land was to be sold; the Lower House being anxious to put it into the hands of industrious people who were likely to work on it as farmers, even though they could pay very little for it; the Upper House preferring that it should be sold to the people who offered the most money for it. On this and other questions in dispute the Lower House gained the victory.

5. Exhibitions.—It was not till the year 1880 that all these contentions were set at rest, but from that time the colony passed into a period of peace, during which it made the most astonishing progress in all directions. That progress was indicated in a most decided way by the exhibitions held in the colony. It had from time to time in previous years held inter-colonial exhibitions at which all the colonies had met in friendly competition. But in 1880, and again in 1888, Victoria invited all the world to exhibit their products at her show. A magnificent building was erected in one of the parks of Melbourne, and behind it were placed acres of temporary wooden erections, and the whole was filled with twenty acres of exhibits. A similar show, held in 1888, was much larger, and helped, by its fine collection of pictures, its grand displays of machinery, its educational courts, its fine orchestral music, and so on, in a hundred ways to stimulate and develop the minds of the people. During recent years Victoria has been very busy in social legislation. While enjoying peace under the direction of a coalition Government with Mr. Duncan Gillies and Mr. Alfred Deakin at its head, the colony has tried experiments in regulating the liquor traffic; in closing shops at an early hour; in irrigating the waterless plains of the north-west, and in educating farmers and others into the most approved methods of managing their businesses. What is to be the eventual result no one can as yet very definitely prophesy. But the eyes of many thoughtful persons throughout the world are at present turned to Victoria to see how those schemes are working which have been so zealously undertaken for the good of the people.

Up till 1890 the progress of the colony was astonishing. Its central half forms a network of railways. Its agriculture and its trades have doubled themselves every few years; and though a period of restless activity and progress was in 1890 followed by a time of severe depression, the community, like all the other Australian colonies, has great times of prosperity in store for it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

These houses were gathered in little villages, often pleasantly situated beside a stream, or on the sea-shore; but sometimes for defence they were placed on a hill and surrounded by high fences with ditches and earthen walls so as to make a great stronghold of the kind they called a “pah”. The trenches were sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep; but generally the pah was built so that a rapid river or high precipices would defend two or three sides of it, while only the sides not so guarded by nature were secured by ditches and a double row of palisades. Within these enclosures stages were erected behind the palisades so that the fighting men could hurl stones and spears and defy an attacking party.

2. Maori Customs.—Round their villages and pahs they dug up the soil and planted the sweet potato, and the taro, which is the root of a kind of arum lily; they also grew the gourd called calabash, from whose hard rind they made pots and bowls and dishes. When the crops of sweet potato and taro were over they went out into the forest and gathered the roots of certain sorts of ferns, which they dried and kept for their winter food. They netted fish and eels; they caught sharks with hook and line and dried their flesh in the sun. To enjoy these meals in comfort they had a broad verandah round their houses which formed an open and generally pleasant dining-room, where they gathered in family circles bound by much affection for one another. The girls especially were sweet and pretty; their mild manners, their soft and musical voices, the long lashes of their drooping eyes, with the gloss of their olive-tinted skins made them perfect types of dusky beauty. Grown a little older they were by no means so attractive, and then when married they deeply scored their faces by the process of tattooing.

The men had their faces, hips, and thighs tattooed, that is, all carved in wavy lines which were arranged in intricate patterns. The women tattooed only their lips, chins, and eyelids, but often smeared their faces with red ochre, and soaked their hair with oil. Men and women wore round the waist a kilt of beautifully woven flax, and over the shoulders a mat of the same material. They were expert sailors, and built themselves large canoes which thirty or forty men would drive forward, keeping time with their paddles. Their large war canoes were sixty and seventy feet long, and would carry 100 men.

Thus they were by no means uncivilised, but their condition was in some respects most barbarous. In person they were dirty, and in manners proud and arrogant. They were easily offended, and never forgave what they considered as an injury or insult. This readiness to take offence and to avenge themselves caused the neighbouring tribes to be for ever at war. They fought with great bravery, slaughtered each other fiercely, and ate the bodies. Sometimes they killed their captives or slaves in order to hold a cannibal feast.

According to their own traditions they had not been always in these islands. Their ancestors came from afar, and each tribe had its own legendary account. But they all agreed that they came from an island away to the north in the Pacific, which they called Hawaiki, and there is little doubt but that some hundreds of years ago their forefathers must in truth have emigrated from some of the South Sea Islands. Whether they found natives on the islands and killed them all, we cannot now discover. There are no traces of any earlier people, but the Maoris in their traditions say that people were found on the islands and slain and eaten by the invaders.

One tribe declared that long ago in far-off Hawaiki a chief hated another, but was too weak to do him harm. He fitted out a canoe for a long voyage, and suddenly murdered the son of his enemy. He then escaped on board the canoe with his followers and sailed away for ever from his home. This legend declared how after many adventures he at length reached New Zealand. Another legend relates that in Hawaiki the people were fighting, and a tribe being beaten was forced to leave the island. Sorrowfully it embarked in two canoes and sailed away out upon the tossing ocean, till, directed by the voice of their god sounding from the depths below them, they landed on the shores of New Zealand.

How many centuries they lived and multiplied there it is impossible to say, as they had no means of writing and recording their history.

3. Tasman.—The earliest we know of them for certain is in the journal of Tasman, who writes under the date of 13th December, 1642, that he had that day seen shores never before beheld by white men. He was then holding eastward after his visit to Tasmania, and the shore he saw was the mountainous land in the North Island. He rounded what we now call Cape Farewell, and anchored in a fine bay, whose green and pleasant shores were backed by high snow-capped mountains. Several canoes came off from the beach filled by Maoris, who lay about a stone’s throw distant and sounded their war trumpets. The Dutch replied by a flourish of their horns. For several days the Maoris would come no nearer, but on the sixth they paddled out with seven canoes and surrounded both vessels. Tasman noticed that they were crowding in a somewhat threatening manner round one of his ships, the Heemskirk, and he sent a small boat with seven men to warn the captain to be on his guard. When the Maoris saw these seven men without weapons sailing past their canoes they fell on them, instantly killed three and began to drag away their bodies; no doubt to be eaten. The other four Dutchmen, by diving and swimming, escaped and reached the ship half dead with fright. Then with shouts the whole line of Maori canoes advanced to attack the ships; but a broadside startled them. They were stupefied for a moment at the flash and roar of the cannon and the crash of the wood-work of their canoes; then they turned and fled, carrying with them, however, one of the bodies. Tasman sailed down into Cook Strait, which he very naturally took to be a bay, the weather being too thick for him to see the passage to the south-east. He then returned and coasted northwards to the extreme point of New Zealand, which he called Cape Maria Van Diemen, probably after the wife of that Governor of Batavia who had sent out the expedition. Tasman called the lands he had thus discovered “New Zealand,” after that province of Holland which is called Zealand, or the Sea-land. The bay in which he had anchored was called Murderers’ or Massacre Bay.

4. Captain Cook.—For more than a hundred years New Zealand had no white men as visitors. It was in 1769 that Captain Cook, on his way home from Tahiti, steering to the south-west in the hope of discovering new lands, saw the distant hills of New Zealand. Two days later he landed on the east coast of the North Island, a little north of Hawke Bay. There lay the little ship the Endeavour at anchor, with its bulging sides afloat on a quiet bay, in front a fertile but steeply sloping shore with a pah on the crown of a hill, and a few neat little houses by the side of a rapid stream. In the evening Cook, Banks, and other gentlemen took the pinnace and rowed up the streamlet. They landed, leaving some boys in charge of the boat, and advanced towards a crowd of Maoris, making friendly signs as they approached. The Maoris ran away, but some of them seeing their chance made a dash at the boys in the boat and tried to kill them. The boys pushed off, and dropped down the stream; the Maoris chased them, determined on mischief. Four of them being very murderous, the coxswain fired a musket over their heads. They were startled, but continued to strike at the boys with wooden spears. Seeing the danger the coxswain levelled his musket and shot one of the Maoris dead on the spot. The others fled, and Cook, hearing the report of the gun, hurried back and at once returned to the ship.

Over and over again Cook did everything he could devise to secure the friendship of these people; but they always seemed to have only one desire, and that was to kill and eat the white visitors. One day five canoes came out to chase the Endeavour as she was sailing along the coast. Another time nine canoes densely filled with men sailed after her, paddling with all their might to board the vessel. In these and many other cases cannon had to be fired over their heads to frighten them before they would desist from their attempt to capture the ship. At one bay, the Maoris made friends and went on board the Endeavour to sell provisions, but when all was going forward peaceably they suddenly seized a boy and pulled him into their canoe. They were paddling away with him when some musket shots frightened them, and in the confusion the boy dived and swam back.

Cook sailed completely round the North Island, charting the shores with great care, often landing, sometimes finding tribes who made friends, more often finding tribes whose insolence or treachery led to the necessity of firing upon them with small shot. If he had only known the customs of these people he would have understood that to be friendly with one tribe meant that the next tribe would murder and eat them for revenge. He then sailed round the South Island, landing less frequently, however, till at length he took his leave of New Zealand at what he called Cape Farewell, and sailed away to Australia. He had been nearly six months exploring the coasts of these islands, and that in a very small vessel. During this time he had left pigs and goats, fowls and geese to increase in the forests, where they soon multiplied, especially the pigs. Potatoes and turnips were left with many tribes, who quickly learnt how to grow them, so that after ten or twelve years had passed away these vegetables became the chief food of all the Maoris.

5. French Visitors.—Whilst Cook was sailing round the North Island, a French vessel anchored in a bay of that island in search of fresh water. The Ngapuhi tribe received them with pleasure and gave them all the assistance in their power, but some of them stole a boat. The captain, named De Surville, then seized one of the chiefs and put him in irons. The boat not being given up, he burnt a village and sailed to South America, the chief dying on the road.

Three years later in 1772 came another Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, with two ships; this time for the express purpose of making discoveries. He sailed up the west coast, rounded the North Cape and anchored in the Bay of Islands. He landed and made friends with the Ngapuhi tribe and took his sick sailors ashore. The Maoris brought him plenty of fish, and Du Fresne made them presents in return. For a month the most pleasant relations continued, the Maoris often sleeping on board and the French officers spending the night in the Maori houses. One day Captain Marion went ashore with sixteen others to enjoy some fishing. At night they did not return. Captain Crozet, who was second in command, thought they had chosen to sleep ashore, but the next day he sent a boat with twelve men to find where they were. These men were scattering carelessly through the woods when suddenly a dense crowd of Maoris, who had concealed themselves, attacked and killed all the Frenchmen but one. He who escaped was hidden behind some bushes, and he saw his comrades brained one after another; then he saw the fierce savages cut their bodies in pieces, and carry them away in baskets to be eaten. When the Maoris were gone he crept along the shore and swam to the ship, which he reached half dead with terror. Crozet landed sixty men, and the natives gathered for a fight; but the Frenchmen merely fired volley after volley into a solid mass of Maori warriors, who, stupefied at the flash and roar, were simply slaughtered as they stood. Crozet burnt both the Maori villages and sailed away. In later times the Maoris explained that the French had desecrated their religious places by taking the carved ornaments out of them for firewood.

6. Cook’s Later Visits.—In his second voyage Cook twice visited New Zealand in 1773 and 1774. He had two vessels, one of them under the command of Captain Furneaux. While this latter vessel was waiting in Queen Charlotte Sound, a bay opening out of Cook Strait, Captain Furneaux sent a boat with nine men who were to go on shore and gather green stuff for food. A crowd of Maoris surrounded them, and one offered to sell a stone hatchet to a sailor, who took it; but to tease the native, in silly sailor fashion, this sailor would neither give anything for it nor hand it back. The Maori in a rage seized some bread and fish which the sailors were spreading for their lunch. The sailors closed to prevent their touching the victuals; a confused struggle took place, during which the English fired and killed two natives, but before they could load again they were all knocked on the head with the green stone axes of the Maoris. An officer sent ashore later on with a strong force found several baskets of human limbs, and in one of them a head which he recognised as that of a sailor belonging to the party. The officer attacked some hundreds of the Maoris as they were seated at their cannibal feast, and drove them away from the half-gnawed bones.

7. The Whalers.—For ten or twelve years New Zealand was not visited by white men, but the foundation of a town at Sydney, in 1788, brought ships out much more often into these waters, and before long it was found that the seas round New Zealand were well stocked with whales. Vessels came out to carry on the profitable business of catching them and taking their oil to Europe. For fresh water and for fuel for their stoves they called at the shores of New Zealand, chiefly at Queen Charlotte Sound, at Dusky Bay on the west coast of South Island, but especially at the Bay of Islands near the extreme north of North Island. There they not only got fresh water but bought fish and pork and potatoes from the friendly tribes of natives, paying for them with knives and blankets; and although quarrels sometimes occurred and deaths took place on both sides, the whalers continued more and more to frequent these places. Sometimes the sailors, attracted by the good looks of the Maori girls, took them as wives and lived in New Zealand. These men generally acted as sealers. They caught the seals that abounded on some parts of the coast, and gathered their skins until the ships called back, when the captain would give them tobacco and rum, guns and powder in exchange for their seal-skins. These the sealers generally shared with the Maoris, who therefore began to find out that it was good to have a white man to be dwelling near them: he brought ships to trade, and the ships brought articles that the Maoris began to value.

8. Maoris visit Sydney.—In 1793, Governor Hunter at Sydney directed that the convicts at Norfolk Island should be set to weave the fine flax that grew wild in that island. They tried, but could make no cloth so fine and soft as that made by the Maoris out of very much the same sort of plant. A ship was sent to try and persuade some Maoris to come over and teach the art. The captain of the ship, being lazy or impatient, did not trouble to persuade; he seized two Maoris and carried them off. They were kept for six months at Norfolk Island, but Captain King treated them very well, and sent them back with ten sows, two boars, a supply of maize-seed and other good things to pay them for their time. When King became Governor of New South Wales he sent further presents over to Te Pehi, chief of the tribe to which these young men belonged, and hence Te Pehi longed to see the sender of these things. He and his four sons ventured to go in an English vessel to Sydney, where they were astonished at all they saw. On his return Te Pehi induced a sailor named George Bruce, who had been kind to him when he was sick on board ship, to settle in the tribe; the young Englishman married Te Pehi’s most charming daughter, and was tattooed and became the first of the Pakeha Maoris, or white men who lived in Maori fashion. Pleased by Te Pehi’s account of what he had seen, other Maoris took occasional trips to Sydney, working their passages in whaling ships.

9. Friendly Relations.—Meanwhile English vessels more and more frequently visited New Zealand for pork and flax and kauri pine, or else to catch seals, or merely to take a rest after a long whaling trip. The Bay of Islands became the chief anchorage for that purpose, and thither the Maoris gathered to profit by the trade. Some of the more adventurous, when they found that the English did them no harm, shipped as sailors for a voyage on board the whalers; but though they made good seamen they were sometimes sulky and revengeful, and rarely continued at it more than two or three years.

In 1805 a Maori went with an English surgeon all the way to England, and returned with the most astounding tales of London and English wonders. During the next four or five years several other Maoris went to England, while, on the other hand, a few very respectable white men began to settle down in New Zealand. They were far superior to the rough sailors and liberated convicts of Sydney, who so far had been the most frequent visitors, so that mutual good-will seemed to be established, as the Maoris found that there was much they could gain by the visits of the white men. But all this friendliness was marred by an unfortunate occurrence.

10. The Boyd Massacre.—In 1809 a ship named the Boyd sailed from Sydney to go to England round Cape Horn. She had on board seventy white people, including some children of officers at Sydney who were on their way to England to be educated. As she was to call at New Zealand to get some kauri spars, five Maoris went with her, working their passage over. One of these Maoris, named Tarra, was directed during the voyage to do something which he refused to do. The captain caused him to be twice flogged. When the ship anchored in a bay a little to the north of the Bay of Islands, Tarra went ashore, and showed to his tribe his back all scarred with the lash. Revenge was agreed on. The captain was enticed ashore with a few men; and they were suddenly attacked and all killed. Then the Maoris quietly got alongside the ship, rushed on board and commenced the work of massacre among men, women and children, who were all unarmed. Some of the children fell and clasped the feet of Tarra, begging him to save them, but the young savage brained them without mercy. All were slain except a woman and two children who hid themselves during the heat of the massacre, and a boy who was spared because he had been kind to Tarra. All the bodies were taken ashore and eaten. One of the chiefs while curiously examining a barrel of gunpowder caused it to explode, blowing himself and a dozen others to pieces.

Te Pehi, the head chief of the Ngapuhi, was extremely vexed when he heard of this occurrence, and took some trouble to rescue the four survivors, but five whaling vessels gathered for revenge; they landed their crews, who shot thirty Maoris whether belonging to Tarra’s tribe or not, and in their blind fury burnt Te Pehi’s village, severely wounding the chief himself. This outrage stopped all friendly intercourse for a long time. The whalers shot the Maoris whenever they saw them, about a hundred being killed in the next three years, while the Maoris killed and ate any white people they could catch. Thus in 1816 the Agnes, an American brig, happened to be wrecked on their shores. They killed and ate everybody on board, except one man, who was tattooed and kept for a slave during twelve years.

11. The Missionaries.—In spite of all these atrocities a band of missionaries had the courage to settle in New Zealand and begin the work of civilising these Maori tribes. This enterprise was the work of a notable man named Samuel Marsden, who had in early life been a blacksmith in England, but had devoted himself with rare energy to the laborious task of passing the examinations needed to make him a clergyman. He was sent out to be the chaplain to the convicts at Sydney, and his zeal, his faith in the work he had to do, and his roughly eloquent style, made him successful where more cultured clergymen would have failed. For fourteen years he toiled to reform convicts, soldiers, and officers in Sydney; and when Governor King went home to England in 1807, after his term was expired, Marsden went with him on a visit to his friends. While in London, Marsden brought before the Mission Society the question of doing something to Christianise these fierce but intelligent people, and the society not only agreed, but employed two missionaries named Hall and King to undertake the work.