Volume 70 — THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

We were listening one evening, rather listlessly, as people sometimes do to an old friend’s narrative of business and family arrangements, when the equal current of such talk was somewhat disturbed by the words—“My brother’s new partner in the business at Wellington, Hoani Riri Tamihana, a very respectable man, and well connected in the Ngatiawa.” This nomenclature was out of the usual way, and was suggestive of inquiry. Our friend was quite open and communicative at first, though some of the company did at last drive him into disagreeable corners. He remembered Hoani Riri when he and his brother became first acquainted with him; he wore a cakahoo or mat dress, had his patoo-patoo in his hand, and was distinguished by several rows of beads made of the bones of fingers and toes, highly polished, and arranged row after row with a graduated symmetry which indicated a very accurate taste. There was no reason why a New Zealander might not get rid of such decorations, and sit on a three-legged stool as composedly as our own countrymen when they have cast off their scarlet coats and white cords; but there was a feature of his early independent life which still stuck to Hoani Riri, and our friend was rather annoyed in having to admit it. He was tatooed. It was clear that this incurable relic of the state of society in which he had spent his youth was considered by his partner’s brother a great inconvenience to him. It prevented him—with all his acuteness, said to be remarkable, and his business habits, pronounced as steady and imperturbable—from being able effectively to represent “the house” in this country. Among Parsees, and other Orientals, we have odd enough names put to very discountable and acceptable paper. Moreover, heads of houses and directors of companies will respectfully meet occasionally with a dusky, stately, bearded and turbaned worshipper of the Prophet, or of anything else; but a man whose skin people have taken the liberty of tatooing!—it would not be easy to get clerks and cashkeepers to admit his superiority and importance. There would be a difficulty in cashing his check, even though his presence offered the best possible means of showing its genuineness, since the signature is a tracing of the pattern of the tatoo.

But there was another little matter in Hoani Riri’s personal history, to which fastidious people would find it still more difficult to reconcile themselves, and which indeed might be counted an insurmountable bar to his ever being received in good society in this country, or making an eligible matrimonial connection. He had in his younger days been addicted to human flesh; and, being a very candid and really high-minded man, he admits that, though he has now acquired totally different tastes, the relish with which he partook in cannibal feasts—especially when the fleshy part of a young female was served up—is still a matter of by no means disagreeable recollection to him.

In this part of the conversation we were slightly startled by a physiological friend, who broke into it somewhat vehemently, maintaining that he considered the cannibalism of the New Zealanders—now authenticated beyond all question—to be a remarkable indication of their capacity to become a great civilised people. As this was by no means a self-evident proposition, the physiologist was asked for his reasons, which we shall abbreviate thus: Take a map of the world, and see how distant New Zealand is from the rest of society—if it may so be termed—from the clustering continents and islands of the world over which man and the brute and vegetable creation have gradually spread. If we suppose it to be from Central Asia, or from any other specified part of the world, that the present forms of animal and vegetable life first radiated, we may trace their dispersal, by easy gradations, to the extremities of the rest of the known portions of the globe—to the southern capes of Africa and America—to Borneo and Guinea, and even to Australia. But the New Zealand islands are twelve hundred miles distant from the nearest shore, and that nearest shore is the thinly peopled and almost sterile Australia. Now we can imagine that, while an adventurous race of men—the New Zealanders are believed to be of Malay origin—might overcome so great a difficulty, and establish themselves in these beautiful islands, they would not be accompanied by a like infusion of the animal and the vegetable world. Accordingly, we find the fact precisely in accordance with the supposition. Of indigenous quadrupeds there is scarcely one in New Zealand so large as a house rat. The very few birds found by the earliest European explorers, though some of them had fine plumage, presented no more edible substantiality than a street sparrow. The fruit and vegetable department was equally meagre—there was really almost nothing to support life but an edible fern. Now observe how the poor, abject, in every way inferior race, found scattered round the edge of the great Australian continent, acted in circumstances nearly similar—for there, also, indigenous animals and vegetables suitable for food are rare. They lived on fern roots and cobra worms, with an occasional opossum; and all travellers have remarked, that they manage to preserve themselves from such sources merely in existence, on the border of annihilation, and are consequently a wretched and spiritless race. But your New Zealander, determined to keep up his physical condition, and finding that there was nothing else for it, made a virtue of the necessity of eating his kind—“and in fact,” continues our friend, who seemed to have got on a strange hobby, “the cannibal propensity is deeper in the highest conditioned races of man than most people imagine. Why was pork, for instance, prohibited to the Jews and other Oriental nations, of strong physical temperament and appetite? Why, but that it so closely resembles human flesh that people in a state of semibarbarism might get into the habit of overlooking the distinction, and lapse into cannibalism. It was as well to have a barrier against a system of living which would be so obviously deleterious a feature in society, and the obsta principiis principle was adopted.”

But, without acceding to our physiological friend’s peculiar speculations, there seems to be something extremely curious and interesting in finding that our colonists have for the first time come in contact with elements of progressive civilisation capable of keeping pace with our own; in hearing of savages with whom our blood may mix without deterioration, and detecting in very cannibalism a people destined to so proud a destiny as to share, with the heirs of the highest civilisation, one of the fairest portions of the surface of the earth. The New Zealander is, in fact, the first savage who, after giving battle to the civilised man, and being beaten—as the savage must ever be—has frankly offered to sit down beside us, and enjoy with us the fruits of mutual civilisation. A temperate healthy climate, suitable to a highly conditioned race, was necessary to the development of such a phenomenon. The British race do not spread at all, or spread very scantily, in tropical countries, where the question of superiority of race is at once settled by the hardy European degenerating so as to be in a generation or two inferior to the aboriginal inhabitant. In North America, however, we found a race inhabiting territories where our own people are capable of the fullest development, yet where the aborigines have baffled all efforts at civilisation and improvement. It is the same in the temperate territories of Northern Africa; Hottentots, Kaffirs, Zoolus—all were capable of making some slight advance; but all stopped short, and showed themselves unfit to partake in the great destinies of the British race. The aborigines of Australia, though there may be some differences between tribes a thousand or two miles from each other—as between those of Moreton Bay and the Swan River—are all of an extremely degraded type, both physically and intellectually; and even the most conscientious efforts which have been made, on rare occasions unfortunately, to improve their condition, have ever signally failed. If possible, the nations of Van Diemen’s Island were still a lower type of humanity than those of the Australian continent. There is no reason to suppose that these representatives of almost the lowest type of humanity were cannibals, but we have the cannibalism of the bush-ranger convicts attested beyond all doubt to Parliamentary committees. These desperate men, the essence of British criminality, threatened at one time to overpower the law, and establish an independent community in the rocky island to which they were transported. In their cunning and capacity, in their endurance under calamity, and ruthlessness in victory, they had some resemblance to the New Zealanders, whom also they resembled in having recourse to cannibalism. It is not easy to imagine anything more horrible than the description of two of these monsters of degenerate civilisation, Greenhill and Pierce, who wandered together day after day, each watching his moment for plunging his axe into the skull of the other, while, though each knew his comrade’s murderous intention, they were respectively prevented from separating by the hope of a victory and a feast. It is singular enough that thus, at the antipodes, we should have, next door as it were to each other, the barbarism following the departed civilisation of part of an energetic race, bearing so close a resemblance to the barbarism which is evidently, in another race, but the precedent of a state of high civilisation.

Nothing has been more bandied about, between scepticism and credulity, than cannibalism or anthropophagy. Besides what Herodotus says of the Massagetæ and other tribes, who ate their relatives by way of burial, there have been through all ages charges of this kind, which are purely fabulous; and few believe Purchas’s account of those Africans who exposed human flesh ready for sale at all times, in well-kept booths or shambles, though he gives it on the credit of “John Battell of Essex, a near neighbour of mine, and a man worthy of credit.” The discredit found to attach to the old traveller’s stories about the Peruvians rearing offspring for the table, and the Saracens, who paid large sums for sucking Christian babes, made people disbelieve in any such practice as systematic anthropophagy, though it was generally admitted that miserable beings, half maddened by starvation and hardship, had sometimes forgotten their nature, and devoured their kind, under impulses that rendered them no more accountable for what they did than the most confirmed madman.

The history of New Zealand, however, places on record the fact of a people indulging in systematic cannibalism, accompanied in recent times with the interesting fact, that the systematic cannibal has been found capable of a high civilisation. Cooke took pains to prove the existence of the practice, both by inquiry and experiment. Not content with turning over the remains of cannibal feasts, he got a New Zealand boy to exhibit the propensity on his own deck. The many notices and statements which other travellers have preserved are but a general acknowledgment of what Cooke so distinctly proved. But it is in a now forgotten book, called “A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827, by Augustus Earle,” that we find the most succinct, clear, unvarnished narrative of such a banquet. Mr Earle was an artist, and a wanderer in several unfrequented countries. Although he had thus many things to relate, which could only be taken at his own word, his unquestioned character for truthfulness obtained credence for them. The cannibal feast of which he gives a minute description—too minute to be pleasant—took place on the body of a female slave, killed under circumstances which, in this country, and without looking on the act as merely supplying the market with butcher-meat, we would consider gross treachery. We shall spare our readers the more minute parts of the description, which, in their intense truthfulness, are really an unpleasant piece of reading. But we are desirous to resuscitate a portion of the account which shows the spirit in which the perpetrators acted—a spirit of utilitarian coolness and system, exhibiting no ebullitions of the unrestrained savage nature, but, on the contrary, accompanied, as we shall see, with great self-restraint, shown under circumstances of provocation and disappointment.

“Here stood Captain Duke and myself, both witnesses of a scene which many travellers have related, and their relations have invariably been treated with contempt; indeed, the veracity of those who had the temerity to relate such incredible events has been everywhere questioned. In this instance it was no warrior’s flesh to be eaten; there was no enemy’s blood to drink, in order to infuriate them. They had no revenge to gratify; no plea could they make of their passions having been roused by battle, nor the excuse that they eat their enemies to perfect their triumph. This was an action of unjustifiable cannibalism. Atoi, the chief, who had given orders for this cruel feast, had only the night before sold us four pigs for a few pounds of powder; so he had not even the excuse of want of food. After Captain Duke and myself had consulted with each other, we walked into the village, determining to charge Atoi with his brutality.

“Atoi received us in his usual manner; and his handsome open countenance could not be imagined to belong to so savage a monster as he had proved himself to be. I shuddered at beholding the unusual quantity of potatoes his slaves were preparing to eat with this infernal banquet. We talked coolly with him on the subject; for, as we could not prevent what had taken place, we were resolved to learn (if possible) the whole particulars. Atoi at first tried to make us believe he knew nothing about it, and that it was only a meal for his slaves; but we had ascertained it was for himself and his favourite companions. After various endeavours to conceal the fact, Atoi frankly owned that he was only waiting till the cooking was completed to partake of it. He added that, knowing the horror we Europeans held these feasts in, the natives were always most anxious to conceal them from us, and he was very angry that it had come to our knowledge; but, as he had acknowledged the fact, he had no objection to talk about it. He told us that human flesh required a greater number of hours to cook than any other; that, if not done enough, it was very tough, but when sufficiently cooked it was as tender as paper. He held in his hand a piece of paper, which he tore in illustration of his remark. He said the flesh then preparing would not be ready till next morning; but one of his sisters whispered in my ear that her brother was deceiving us, as they intended feasting at sunset.

“We inquired why and how he had murdered the poor girl. He replied, that running away from him to her own relations was her only crime. He then took us outside his village, and showed us the post to which she had been tied, and laughed to think how he had cheated her: ‘For,’ said he, ‘I told her I only intended to give her a flogging; but I fired, and shot her through the heart!’ My blood ran cold at this relation, and I looked with feelings of horror at the savage while he related it. Shall I be credited when I again affirm, that he was not only a handsome young man, but mild and genteel in his demeanour? He was a man we had admitted to our table, and was a general favourite with us all; and the poor victim to his bloody cruelty was a pretty girl of about sixteen years of age!...

“After some time spent in contemplating the miserable scene before us, during which we gave full vent to the most passionate exclamations of disgust, we determined to spoil this intended feast: this resolution formed, we rose to execute it. I ran off to our beach, leaving Duke on guard, and, collecting all the white men I could, I informed them of what had happened, and asked them if they would assist in destroying the oven, and burying the remains of the girl: they consented, and each having provided himself with a shovel or a pickaxe, we repaired in a body to the spot. Atoi and his friends had by some means been informed of our intention, and they came out to prevent it. He used various threats to deter us, and seemed highly indignant; but as none of his followers appeared willing to come to blows, and seemed ashamed that such a transaction should have been discovered by us, we were permitted by them to do as we chose. We accordingly dug a tolerably deep grave; then we resolutely attacked the oven. On removing the earth and leaves, the shocking spectacle was presented to our view—the four quarters of a human body half-roasted. During our work, clouds of steam enveloped us, and the disgust created by our task was almost overpowering. We collected all the parts we could recognise; the heart was placed separately, we supposed as a savoury morsel for the chief himself. We placed the whole in the grave, which we filled up as well as we could, and then broke and scattered the oven.

“By this time the natives from both villages had assembled; and a scene similar to this was never before witnessed in New Zealand. Six unarmed men, quite unprotected, (for there was not a single vessel in the harbour, nor had there been for a month,) had attacked and destroyed all the preparations of the natives for what they consider a national feast; and this was done in the presence of a great body of armed chiefs, who had assembled to partake of it. After having finished this exploit, and our passion and disgust had somewhat subsided, I could not help feeling that we had acted very imprudently in thus tempting the fury of these savages, and interfering in an affair that certainly was no concern of ours; but as no harm accrued to any of our party, it plainly shows the influence ‘the white men’ have already obtained over them: had the offence we committed been done by any hostile tribe, hundreds of lives would have been sacrificed.

“The next day our old friend King George paid us a long visit, and we talked over the affair very calmly. He highly disapproved of our conduct. ‘In the first place,’ said he, ‘you did a foolish thing, which might have cost you your lives; and yet did not accomplish your purpose after all, as you merely succeeded in burying the flesh near the spot on which you found it. After you went away, it was again taken up, and every bit was eaten;’—a fact I afterwards ascertained by examining the grave, and finding it empty. King George further said, ‘It was an old custom, which their fathers practised before them; and you had no right to interfere with their ceremonies. I myself,’ added he, ‘have left off eating human flesh, out of compliment to you white men; but you have no reason to expect the same compliance from all the other chiefs. What punishment have you in England for thieves and runaways?’ We answered, ‘After trial, flogging or hanging.’ ‘Then,’ he replied, ‘the only difference in our laws is, you flog and hang, but we shoot and eat.’”

What renders the rapid civilisation of the New Zealanders the more remarkable is, that the practice of eating human flesh appears to have continued for several years after Mr Earle’s visit. Among other instances which might be cited, the following occurs in the Lords’ Report on New Zealand in 1844. Mr Francis Molesworth is examined.

Q. “Do any of the tribes in the interior practise cannibalism?”

A. “Yes, and they do so on the coast. There was a case about eighteen months before I came away.”

Q. “What were the circumstances of that case?”

A. “It was the case of Rangihaeata, at some festival or other; he took a slave girl, and murdered her and ate her. I knew the particulars of that case from a man of the name of Jenkins. He was there at the time, and offered to buy the girl from Rangihaeata, but he would not agree to it; he offered pigs for her, but Rangihaeata said, ‘A piece of Maori flesh is much better than pork,’ and he killed her and ate her. It is not very long since an encounter took place between two tribes near Auckland, and a number of prisoners were taken, and they were all eaten.”

Mr Angas went through the country about two years after this testimony was given, but perhaps about five years after the state of matters to which it refers. He was collecting the materials for his magnificent illustrations of New Zealand life and scenery, where he gives a very pleasing portrait of a young lady, Kaloki, with this memorandum attached to it:—

“I met her on a visit to her friends at Te Aroh Pah, near Wellington, in company with Kutia, the wife of Rauparaha, and a large party of her attendants from the Roturua lakes, whither she offered to accompany me, for the purpose of sketching and obtaining portraits of the principal chiefs, adding that her introduction would be an immediate passport throughout the entire district.”

There is something in this very different in tone from the description of the cannibal feast. But we cannot turn even Mr Angas’s fine illustrations, without feeling that they represent a state of matters in rapid transition; that a few years will have swept away what they embody of the past state of the country; and that the civilised descendants of the mingled race, who seem destined to people these beautiful islands, will turn to them with a strange interest, as an embodiment of customs and manners that, in the antipodes, have grown older in a generation than, in this country of unassisted self-effected civilisation, the usages of our Saxon ancestors have grown in a thousand years. Even after going beyond these thousand years, we find no proof that there was cannibalism in this country. The New Zealand gentlemen of the next generation will have their after-dinner jokes about who had eaten whose uncle or grandfather, as Scottish gentlemen have had their talk about old family feuds. Here, among the most curious of Mr Angas’s pictures, is a representation of the mansion-house of that Rauparaha, whose wife was the friend of the interesting Kaloki. It has an Egyptian-shaped door elaborately carved. At either side, the extremities of the roof-beams are supported by square pillars, covered with hideous representations of animal life. The name of the mansion—a name which it will probably long preserve—is “Eat-man-house:” probably its mother-of-pearl-eyed monsters have gazed on many a jolly feast beneath its roof. We turn over Mr Angas’s pages, and next find a portrait of a gentleman in an easy attitude, and in a good modern English dress, which does his tailor credit. He has just one anachronism, as the French would call it—like our friend’s partner, he is tatooed; and there is no denying the grotesqueness produced by the immediate contact of the artificiality of savage with that of civilised life.

The evidence collected by Cooke and Bankes, of the extent to which civilisation had grown among these people, unaided from without, might have been expected to create more astonishment than it did. The size of their war canoes, the number of men accommodated and disciplined to formidable manœuvres in them, the knowledge of navigation which they displayed, and, above all, the elaborate and in many respects symmetrical decoration of their war vessels, their weapons, their houses, their public monuments and their burial-places, must have all from the first indicated them as a remarkable people. Their profuse decorations in wood and stone seem, when compared with those of other nations moving onward to civilisation, to indicate that the human intellect in its struggles after symmetry, beauty, harmony of form, or whatever artistic perfection may be called, must pass through endeavours having a generic resemblance. In the sculptured stones of Scotland, to which we lately referred, in the older Egyptian monuments, in the alabaster carvings of upper Asia, in the ornaments of the lately discovered cities of Central America,—there is a common characteristic resemblance to the artistic labours of the New Zealander.

The obdurate ferocity of the inhabitants, which made our navigators shun their shores for upwards of half a century, was of a kind, when examined, to contain promise of civilisation. However deep their hatred and unextinguishable their pugnacity, they were not capricious emanations of mere savage passions; both had their causes, and were kept alive to produce effects; and had we, in our intercourse with them, looked on them and treated them as reasoning and in many respects able men, we would have fared better. All the foreign blood they shed, whether openly or treacherously, was with the one design of protection—of saving their liberties and their possessions from invasion; and when looking back from the dawn of peace and progress which has now brightened over this singular people, the white man is bound to confess that they had reason in their suspicions, and that they showed wisdom and courage in their conduct. The war which lasted in New Zealand from 1843, when the land disputes began, to 1848, though productive of little bloodshed, is one of the most remarkable in the world’s history. Since the invasion of Britain by the Romans, it was unknown that the natives, thinly scattered over a large territory (the islands cover the same area with Britain, and were supposed to be peopled by about 150,000 inhabitants) should for years keep a civilised force at defiance. The equality of the contest involved no reproach to the civilised troops, since they found that, in the persons of tatooed savages, they met an army under consummate commanders disciplined to the highest point, and trained to partisan warfare. They were expert at the use of the rifle, knew well the art of stockade fortification, and were in all respects a match for their adversaries, with the addition of knowing the country and its resources. Were there a population such as these New Zealanders in Southern Africa, the prospect of our retaining our possessions near the Cape would be quite hopeless. Experienced military men noticed a generic difference between the New Zealand war and other conflicts with aborigines. The bravest savages can generally do no more than fight hand to hand; the New Zealanders conducted campaigns. Barbarians generally see the result of successful operations in extensive bloodshed; but the New Zealanders saw it only in success, and, while they were parsimonious of the lives of their own followers, did not spill uselessly the blood of their opponents. The usual difficulty in bringing civilised troops to deal with savages arises from the former always operating with and against masses, and being unprepared for the peculiar individual machinations of combatants who do not work gregariously and for effective results, but individually, for bloodshed and plunder. In individual strategy the American Indians have excelled all the world; and it was long ere our troops, through the solemn, stiff, unadaptable movements of the eighteenth century, were taught to protect themselves from the untiring inexhaustible cunning of the scalper. Much provoking and useless slaughter took place ere they were prepared for this mode of warfare; but, though frightful and formidable in appearance, it was easily dealt with. Those who had experienced Indian warfare found that totally different resources were required in New Zealand. The individual cunning and ferocity, and the corresponding danger, were wanting; but, on the other hand, an enemy was found capable of conducting a war patiently and scientifically, with an end beyond mere slaughter or momentary triumph. We take this view from the occasional expressions in the military despatches, and still more from their general tone, which assumes that of men dealing with enemies on a level with themselves. The following, which is a specimen taken from the miscellaneous mass of despatches in the Parliamentary papers, is evidently not written about a parcel of wretched savages:—

“On examining the pah, I found it to be built on a very strong post, protected by a row of timber palisades, with trenches and traverses across; about 80 paces long, and 85 broad; in the shape of a parallelogram, with flanking defences.

“There was also a bank of earth thrown up on the scarp side of the trenches, which, owing to the heavy rain, were full of water. The position altogether is a very strong one, and would have been almost impregnable without artillery; but a hill, about 500 yards distant, opposite the front face, commanded it completely. Therefore, had the enemy remained, we might soon have dislodged them with our guns, which were in readiness at Porirua, in command of Captain Henderson, R.A.

“The pah stands on a very high ground, fronting the harbour; at the foot of it runs a deep narrow creek, fordable at low water; the ground about it is excessively swampy, which the troops had to pass over. On the side the pah stands on, rises a very steep bank, which, even without opposition, the men had difficulty in mounting. And on the proper left of the position is a very deep ravine, the side of which is thickly wooded. The right face is also thickly wooded, and the ground gradually slopes away into the valley.

“The rear was the weakest part as to its defence; the ground covered with thick scrub; but, from its locality, I do not consider a position could have been taken up by us on that side. The defences on the front face were of a stronger description than any other.”

“On the morning of the 3d instant, a combined movement was made from the pah at Pauhatanui and Porirua, consisting of 6 officers and 120 men of the 58th, 65th, and 99th regiments, and 30 militia, followed by 150 native allies, from the former; and 4 officers, 100 men of the Royal Artillery, 58th and 65th regiments, with 80 native allies, under command of Major Arney, from the latter place, for the purpose of attacking the rebel chief, and preventing his escape from the Horokiwi valley. We proceeded about four miles into the woods, covering our advance with the usual precautions. The enemy soon discovered our approach, and quickly retired; but, from his fires being still alight, it was evident he had fled into the bush that morning.

“Night coming on, and being uncertain as to the direction of the enemy, or the route they had taken, I deemed it then unadvisable to proceed farther.

“Although our efforts have only led to the dispersion, and not to the total destruction of the rebels, which was my anxious wish to have accomplished, yet, by gaining possession of the stronghold of the enemy, we are enabled to complete the line of outposts at Porirua, so as effectually to prevent any return of the rebels to the district of the Hutt.

“I beg to assure your Excellency that all under my command have well earned from their superiors every credit and approbation, for the zeal and cheerfulness they have exhibited under the severe trials and privations to which they have been subjected for a long time past.”

The Governor, in a despatch of the 9th of July 1849, says—

“I have been assured by many excellent and experienced officers, well acquainted with America and this country, that there is, in a military point of view, no analogy at all between the natives of the two countries; the Maories, both in weapons and knowledge of the art of war, a skill in planning, and perseverance in carrying out the operations of a lengthened campaign, being infinitely superior to the American Indians. In fact, there can be no doubt that they are, for warfare in this country, even better equipped than our own troops.”

He states that—

“They have repeatedly, in encounters with our troops, been reported by our own officers to be equal to any European troops; and are such good tacticians that we have never yet succeeded in bringing them to a decisive encounter, they having always availed themselves of the advantage afforded by their wilds and fastnesses. Their armed bodies move without any baggage, and are attended by the women, who carry potatoes on their backs for the warriors, or subsist them by digging fern root, so that they are wholly independent of supplies, and can move and subsist their forces in countries where our troops cannot live.”

And then, after describing the rapidity and secrecy with which they can move their forces to great distances, and concentrate them on any selected point, we have the other and more pleasing side of the picture, indicating that these formidable qualifications may, under judicious management, give us able coadjutors, instead of deadly enemies, in our efforts to turn to good purpose the material advantages of their fine country.

“They are fond of agriculture; take great pleasure in cattle and horses; like the sea, and form good sailors; are attached to Europeans; admire their customs and manners; are extremely ambitious of rising in civilisation, and of becoming skilled in European arts. They are apt at learning; in many respects extremely conscientious and observant of their word; are ambitious of honour, and are probably the most covetous race in the world. They are also agreeable in manners, and attachments of a lasting character readily and frequently spring up between them and the Europeans.”

Since the conclusion of the war these useful qualities—covetousness included—have, out of formidable enemies, been making apparently excellent subjects. Instead of the nominal submission of savages, with an underground of treachery, ready to come forth in ineffective but mischievous outbreaks, they appear to have made their terms of peace as sincerely as any civilised nation has ever treated, determining to reap the fruits of tranquil co-operation. Not that we believe they would have done so had they seen a clear prospect of defying the British arms, and driving the civilised settlers out of the country: this they would have preferred; but, finding it impracticable, they made up their minds, like wise men, to that next best course, which they are now learning to believe is the best of all. By the time when peace was renewed, we had also learned our lesson. We had become acquainted with their nature, and seen that it was different from that of the ordinary savage. Many social blunders and absurdities arise from mistaking a wise man for a fool, and humouring him accordingly. So, almost from the beginning, there was a series of blunders committed, in treating these clever barbarians as it had been found necessary to treat other aborigines. In fact, under the form of treaties, agreements, sales, or any other nomenclature of civilised and complex life which our transactions with ordinary savages may assume, the end of all is that they are at the mercy of the civilised man, and hold their own side of the bargain by the tenure of his justice and mercy. What he calls a reciprocal treaty, an equitable adjustment, a fair sale for a just price, they must e’en be content to hold so to be; they do not know the meaning of what is said or done, but they know that they must submit. Now, the difficulty with the New Zealanders was, that they knew to a certain extent what they were about, and wanted to know more. They saw the object of some of the transactions with them, but they had sense enough to know that there were other objects beyond what their limited knowledge of the world enabled them to see, and they must be at the bottom of all ere they would rest content. Hence that fearful inextricable land-sale question, filling its hundredweights of blue books. Had the natives possessed neither knowledge nor sense, they would have been easily disposed of by the sic volo sic jubeo. Had they possessed both, there would have been hard bargains struck and kept; but possessing, as they did, much sense, but little knowledge, transactions about matters which they could not at first comprehend, yet were determined to comprehend ere they gave way and were satisfied, seemed interminable.

We must not be understood as entering on the controversy between the New Zealand Company and either the past or the present Government, in making a passing reference to the events in New Zealand during the last twenty years, as they appeared to the natives. When the first colonists settled in the country, the Government left them to make what they could of it. New Zealand was an independent country—they might buy land of those who could sell it, and take their chance; but they were not to expect that, if they bought the land at their own price—perhaps a kettle, a hatchet, or a string of beads—and took such a title as they could get, they were to be backed as absolute owners by the whole power of the British empire. The Government would send a consul, as to any other independent territory to which British subjects resorted, but would do nothing more. But emigration to the new territory took such an impulse, that it was necessary to alter this policy. Besides the missionaries and other individual settlers, the great corporation which first appeared as the New Zealand Association, and merged into the New Zealand Company, was formed. A deep ambition burned in the bosom of those who devised this project. Looking beyond mere wealth, or nominal rank, or temporary notoriety, they saw a possible vista of future greatness in being the humble exiles whose names would afterwards be echoed as those of the founders of a great empire. Nor was the notion quite preposterous. No fairer field for colonial enterprise had ever presented itself to the world. Beyond doubt, the energetic British race, moderately filling these delightful islands, and carrying with them all our constitutional privileges and advantages, without the hereditary evils in pauperism and degradation that weigh them down, would form an empire to predominate more powerfully in the southern hemisphere than ours does in the northern. It was the ambition of these schemers, many of them able men, to be the planters of this empire. It was a bold and brilliant project. Let us, since it has departed with the shadows of other great forgotten projects, though we say but little of it, say that little kindly. The empire on which their hopes were founded may hereafter arise; but neither its reality, nor the fame of being its fabricator, is now for them. They had scarcely even gone far enough to bear the magni nominis umbra.

Well, to return to the natives. The British Government found reasons for changing its policy of inaction. Not only was a powerful body of British subjects making an independent settlement on the islands, but the French were proposing, as no other Government wanted them, to take possession of them for a convict settlement. To be in a position to protect its own subjects who had gone there, and to assert a priority to France, the British sovereignty was proclaimed on 30th January 1840. It is said that the French proclamation was thus anticipated by barely four days. The independence of New Zealand having, however, been previously acknowledged, it would seem scarcely logical, if it were otherwise right, to supersede the native chiefs in their authority, without their consent. Accordingly, on the 5th of February, the celebrated treaty of Waitangi was negotiated with the chiefs. The principle of this document was, that the sovereignty of the British crown was acknowledged to extend over the islands, the inhabitants receiving the privileges of British subjects. The right of property in the soil was reserved to the respective chiefs and tribes, subject only to a right of preemption by the Crown when they sold land, and an adjustment of such equitable claims as might arise out of the previous land transactions.

Now, whether this may or may not have been a wise method of managing a difficult piece of business, the treaty, so far as the natives were concerned, was a solemn farce. The chiefs had first to be united into a fictitious oligarchy, called the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand. They knew as much about the nature of a treaty, in the diplomatic sense in which civilised nations understand it, and insist on its being kept when they can, as about the predicaments and the antinomies. But their sagacity taught them that it was something in itself not dangerous or formidable. The piece of paper could not bombard their pahs, or sink their war canoes; and as to anything it might impart to their prejudice, they were as strong as ever to resist its enforcement. Here lay the difference between such a treaty with New Zealanders and with ordinary savages. These would have been bound to submit, scarcely able to comprehend how or wherefore, unless in a moment of heedless treachery they attempted to repudiate the whole. The New Zealanders were, for their own sakes, pretty good bargain-keepers, when they knew fully the extent to which they had practically committed themselves; but were very jealous of admitting rights which they were not conscious of having knowingly conceded.

At the root of all the complex disputes that followed was their ignorance of the nature of a sale of land. They did not individually possess any—scarcely any uncivilised people do; and they could not comprehend the bartering it like a mat or a bunch of arrows. Still they were ready to make bargains, giving in exchange what they might be found empowered to give, without any warranty of title, as lawyers say. What each chief appears to have bargained for was, that, in consideration of the present given to him, he should abstain personally from disturbing the purchaser over so much land—an engagement he would come to the more readily the less right he had to it. When the rights so acquired had to be officially investigated, under the sanction of the British Government, a whole shoal of land-sharks appeared. One man claimed a territory about the size of a medium English county, which he had bought with a keg of gunpowder. A company claimed the middle island, about the size of Ireland, having given for it a few hundred pounds’ worth of merchandise, with an annuity of £100 a-year to a chief. Among the tempting goods sent out to make a large purchase, by a benevolent association in London, were enumerated “200 muskets; 16 single-barrelled guns; 8 double do.; 15 fowling-pieces; 81 kegs of gunpowder; 2 casks of ball-cartridge; 4 kegs lead slabs; 24 bullet-moulds; 11 quires cartridge paper; 200 cartouche boxes; 1500 flints, and 200 tomahawks.” In some instances there were no less than eight purchasers of the same territory, all possessing titles equally satisfactory, and each demanding that the law should secure to him the estate he had bought with a bundle of red cloth, or a musket, as if it had been a bargain for a piece of property in Middlesex.

The natives had reasons for forming some strange conclusions from the scene of confusion which followed. Where, they asked, was the source of law and authority among these strangers? First there came among them the captains of whaling vessels—noisy, imperative, and exercising all the visible authority of great chiefs. Then came the missionaries—men whose bearing and conversation were totally different from those of the whaling captains. Their voice was mild and their manner subdued, and instead of pea-jackets they wore black coats, descending in two long tapering strips behind; yet, withal, they had a command in their quiet manner, and seemed to consider themselves rather the masters than the slaves of the boisterous sea captains. Thirdly, there came the representatives of the New Zealand Company—men of fortune and station in society, some of them bearing military titles. The New Zealanders see at once that they are gentlemen—worshipful men, who have authority in their air and manner. What, then, is their astonishment when some shabby-looking and coarse-mannered personages come, and snub these worshipful gentlemen with impunity, and tell them to desist from this, and to do that—and actually apprehend one of them, and lock him up; and they submit to the indignity without drawing a trigger? The gentlemen of the New Zealand Company, in fact, wished to establish a sort of local organisation, partaking of the nature of a legislative and an executive, to preserve order among the newly-arrived settlers, and probably to keep the natives in awe with the show of something like a government. So was formed the “Committee of Colonists,” with rules drawn up to serve a very laudable purpose, if nothing more was intended than the preservation of order until sufficient Government official service was supplied. In among these gentlemen, however, march such subordinate officers as the Government can afford for an embryo settlement. Possibly these individuals were not the less consequential and rigid that their original social condition was humble. They managed, at all events, to excite the wrath and ridicule of the gentlemen colonists; but what could these do? After having formed their own organisation, any resistance to the law would have had a very ugly appearance, and they immediately gave way to the “constituted authorities.” Here was matter of wonder to the natives, and it was not reduced when they saw a young man, of aristocratic birth and condition, taken to jail by a policeman for some breach of regulation. The natural order of society seemed inverted among these haughty foreigners. But this was not enough. After the successive authority of the ship captains, the missionaries, the New Zealand Company, and the governor with his subordinates, comes Mr Commissioner Spain, with authority from the Queen of Britain to hold a Court of Inquiry as to the land claims—to examine witnesses, Maori and English—the former being questioned through an interpreter. They ask what this new chief or king is to do. They are told that he is “to report;” and when they ask the meaning of report, their attention is directed to the sound made by the discharge of a cannon. And so they are left to make the best of it.

They did, in some measure, make “the best” of it, since the multiplicity of apparent rulers found them a ready excuse for resisting whatever they did not like, and thought they were strong enough to resist. Though they saw the English gentlemen called colonels, captains, and so forth, submitting to the “constituted authorities,” they were not to follow the example; and the chief, with arms in his hand, was not to be spell-bound by a dirty bit of paper presented to him by a disreputable-looking bailiff, especially if it affected the right to some large tract of territory. The massacre of Wairau, which created so much alarm and sympathy in this country in 1843, arose out of an attempt to enforce a title to a large district, as if it had been an estate in Yorkshire, first by surveying and marking it off, and next by apprehending, in due form, the chiefs who offered interruption. The persons who were to be ejected, like impertinent trespassers, were two chiefs, whose power and importance are known even in this country—Rauparaha and Rangihaeata. Mr Tucket, one of the few who escaped from the massacre, during the inquiry which ensued, gave the following rather amusing account of the preliminary discussion with the chiefs:—

“These chiefs were aware that we had already, more than once, explored the Wairau, and that we were about to commence surveying it. They came to Nelson, on this occasion, to forbid our doing so, and they soon entered on the discussion of the subject; Rauparaha spoke with all the blandness and suavity of an artful woman.

“Rangihaeata, in the other extreme, at once denied our right, and defied us, and never opened his mouth but to breathe forth threats and defiance. They both asserted that the Wairau was not mentioned, nor intended to be included in the sale of lands made by Rauparaha to Colonel Wakefield; the places which he acknowledged he had sold he enumerated successively, again and again. He professed to be reluctant, yet disposed to negotiate the sale of the Wairau, but said that the cask of gold must be a very big one.

“Rangihaeata said they would not sell it, that they wanted it for themselves, and thought of removing there from the Northern Island, and occupying it. He declared that, if we went there, he would meet us and drive us away; and that we should not have the Wairau until we had killed him.

“Nothing would please him; he left the house in a rage, harangued the natives on the beach, repeating his threats that he would kill us if we went to the Wairau. He afterwards met Mr Cotterell, accosted him angrily for having gone to the Wairau, and informed him he would kill him if he caught him there. Mr Cotterell, that he might not be mistaken, called to him a very competent interpreter, and requested him to explain to him the speech, on which this ferocious chief again repeated the threat. Rauparaha subsequently addressed to Mr Cotterell a similar threat.

“With great reluctance Rauparaha was prevailed on to proceed, after the talk at Dr Wilson’s house, to the survey office; we wished to show him the native reserves on the plans, and to convince him that we desired to benefit the condition of the resident natives in each district of the settlement. He listened to the explanation with equal contempt and impatience; would not glance a second time at the plan; said that our profession of reserving lands for the Maories was all gammon, humbug, and lies, accompanying this expressive phraseology with fit manipulations, placing his thumb on the tip of his nose, pulling down his eyelid, and such like approved acts of incredulity and derision, which association with whalers had made familiar to him. He then said in earnest that he had sold us all that land, alluding to the reserves; if the resident Maories would not give it up, we might kill them, repeating it, ‘Kill them, kill them:’ there was no occasion for us to make reserves; the Maories could remove; all that land should be ours, and then we should not want the Wairau. Then he dropped the subject, and began begging again, urging on the agent that the casks must be very big ones; then resuming the subject, he said with a most honied voice, ‘Do not let your people go just yet to the Wairau;’ adding presently, ‘But if they do go, there shall be no harm.’ Next morning another interview took place at the agent’s office; Rangihaeata equally violent and intractable as before; Rauparaha less complaisant, having no further presents to hope for. The agent, firm to his purpose, calmly replied to his threats by informing them that, if they did molest or interrupt the surveyors, he would take three hundred constables with him to the Wairau, and make them prisoners. They parted, Rauparaha affecting courtesy; Rangihaeata, sincere, but implacable, refused, with contempt, all the presents which were carried out of the store for him.”—Returns regarding New Zealand—Commons Papers, 1845.

The putting the finger to the nose is very characteristic of some of the manifestations of New Zealand civilisation. They are a very jocular people, with many set phrases and gestures of raillery. The chiefs who disputed the sale of the Wairau valley might well think that they were made the objects of jocularity when a bailiff presented himself with a writ—called an ejectment, a Bill of Middlesex, or something of that sort—and set about arresting them. Rauparaha’s testimony was taken in the inquiry, and he described the attempt to apprehend him thus:—

“Mr Thompson said, ‘Will you not go?’ I said, ‘No;’ and Rangihaeata, who had been called for, and had been speaking, said so too. Mr Thompson then called for the handcuffs, and held up the warrant, saying, ‘See, this is the Queen to make a tie, Rauparaha!’ I said, ‘I will not listen either to you or to your book.’ He was in a great passion; his eyes rolled about, and he stamped his foot. I said, ‘I had rather be killed than submit to be bound.’ He then called for the constable, who began opening the handcuffs, and to advance towards me. Mr Thompson laid hold of my hand; I pushed him away, saying, ‘What are you doing that for?’”

It was immediately on this that the scuffle which the natives drove to so cruel an extremity began. It might have been known, from previous experience in New Zealand, that such contumelious treatment towards a chief was highly dangerous. The massacre of the crew of the Boyd arose from a chief’s son having been flogged by a shipmaster, who, in bringing him over from Europe to restore him to his friends, chose to treat the young savage aristocrat as a working sailor.

The letters of the native chiefs during the wars and negotiations were translated by sworn interpreters, and are printed with the other State documents in the Parliamentary papers. A funny enough appearance they cut in the solemn company with which they are associated, as the following specimens may show:—

“December, the 2d day, 1845.

“Friend, this new Governor,—You are a stranger, we are strangers; we do not understand your thoughts, and you do not understand our thoughts. What is the right (meaning) of Governor Fitz-Roy? Land? Not by any means, because God made this country for us. It cannot be sliced: if it were a whale, it might be sliced; but as for this, do you return to your own country, to England which was made by God for you. God has made this land for us, and not for any stranger or foreign nation to touch (or meddle with) this sacred country. Yours is heavy; New Zealand is heavy too. My thoughts to (or towards) Mr Williams have ended. That is all.

“War Song.

“Oh! let us fight, fight, fight, aha! let us fight, aha! let us fight: fight for the land which lies open before us: let us fight, fight. You have not taken it away to your land to Europe, on account of the holding on of Whare-whare—to the Heaven climbed is the ascent to the Governor. * * *

“From

(Signed) Little John Pokai,

At the Karewa.

“Write on Thursday precisely. Be quick. If it is not done quickly, I shall understand your sentiments. If you do not write your letter quickly on Thursday precisely, I shall understand your thoughts. Do you not like those thoughts?”

“Te Ruapekapeka,

4 December 1845.

“Friend, Mr Williams,—Salutations to you. Good are the words of your book to me. Friend, let not your heart be hasty to make peace. I am waiting for my grandson John Heke, that he may come to the Ruapekapeka to me; then we will assemble to (meet) the Governor. These words to you are ended.

“Friend, Governor,—Salutations to you. Let not your heart be in haste to make peace; when my men have finished (assembling) then (it will be.) That is the whole of my saying.

(Signed) “Kawiti.”^[2]

Perhaps the world may never discover whether the asterisks represent something too dreadful to be translated, or something which the sworn interpreter found it impossible to put into English. We can only say that we think the latter the more likely theory. Such documents, in the formal contents of the blue books, have some such effect as their authors would present if sitting in committee.

These chiefs had so much at least in common with the leaders of civilised warfare that the British flag was the main object of their hostility. They did not know what it expressed; but their instinct taught them to dislike it because the foreigner deemed it important. Among the Parliamentary documents from which we have been quoting, there is the following state paper in reference to the flag-staff—

“Friend Governor Fitz-Roy, friend the new Governor, I say to you, will you come and let us converse together either at Paihia or at Waitangi, or at the Waimate, that my thoughts may be right towards you concerning the stick (flag-staff) from which grew the evil to the world. Walker and Manu (Kewa) and others say they alone will erect the staff; that will be wrong; it will be better that we should all assemble. They, we, and all the many chiefs of this place and of that place, and you too, and all the English also.

“Now this I say to you, come, that we may set aright your misunderstandings and mine also, and Walker’s too; then it will be right; then we two (you and I) will erect our flag-staff; then shall New Zealand be made one with England; then shall our conversation respecting the land or country be right.

“Mr Busby; the first Governor; the second Governor; the third Governor; the Queen: salutations to you all.

“From

(Signed) “John William Heke Pokai.”

Heke was a great chief, and a great leader in these conflicts; but at the time when the letter just cited was written, the beginning of the year 1846, he was losing position among his brother chiefs, who were abandoning the conflict with the British authorities. More than three years afterwards, in July 1849, when New Zealand had become as tranquil as the Orkney Islands, Heke thought fit to address a long representation to the Queen, for the purpose of instructing her Majesty on the true state of affairs in the colony. Like most statements by disappointed men, it is a rather confused document—

“To the Queen of England, greeting,—Show us the same affectionate regard that King George did in what he said to Hongi when he went to Europe. King George asked him, ‘What was your reason for coming here;’ he said, ‘I had two objects in doing so—muskets and sixty soldiers.’ To which King George answered, ‘I will not consent to send soldiers to New Zealand, lest you should be deprived of your country, which I wish should be left for your children and your people, for they would not act properly.’ They continued arguing on the subject for a long time, and then King George said to Hongi, ‘It is better that I should send some missionaries to you, as friends for you, for they are good people; should they act wrongly, send them back; but if they act properly, befriend them.’ And we accordingly befriended them. They asked us, ‘Will you not give us some portions of your land? Our generosity induced us to consent, and we divided it with them—giving them part and retaining part ourselves. We thought that they were the only people who were to live in this country; but no, there were many thousands of others—but it was when we were foolish that we thought this.’

“The immense congregations of people that took place here was what brought forth the day of trouble, which exactly agreed with what King George had said to Hongi. After trouble had ensued, Mr Busby arrived with a different arrangement, and then the first governor, William Hobson, with a different one again: the flag of New Zealand was abandoned, and that of England alone displayed. He did not state this at the meeting at Waitangi, in order that everybody might know that the flag-staff was the great protection of these islands; and his concealing it was the cause of my error, for I was the person that consented that both Mr Busby and the first governor should live on shore, thinking that they would act rightly; then came Fitz-Roy, the second governor, with a different arrangement again. Not understanding the authority which accompanied the appointment of governors, and to which we had in our folly consented, I urged him to come here, in order that we might talk on the subject of the flag-staff; he did not come, but re-erected it, having four iron bars, and covered with tar. The obstinacy of his thoughts was the cause of the war, and of my transgressing against you. Then came Governor Grey, a fighting governor; I therefore say, who was it sent those people here? Which makes me think that you were the original cause of the dispute between us—which confuted what King George had said to Hongi. Don’t suppose that the fault was mine, for it was not, which is my reason for saying that it rests with you to restore the flag of my island of New Zealand, and the authority of the land of the people. Should you do this, I will then for the first time perceive that you have some love for New Zealand, and for what King George said, for although he and Hongi are dead, still the conversation lives; and it is for you to favour and make much of it, for the sake of peace, love, and quietness; therefore, I say, it remains with you to decide about the people who are continually arriving here, viz., the Governors, the soldiers, the French, and the Americans; to speak out to them to return; they are quarrelsome, and every place will be covered with them; I consequently am aware that their acts are making things progress towards trouble. I thought that when our fighting was over, the men-of-war and steamers would cease coming here and all their mischief-breeding concomitants, for I am careful of the fiery darts of the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

These last words showed that Heke had been listening to the missionaries, though he had derived little of the spirit along with the phraseology of Christianity. In the letter, of which the long passage just cited is but a comparatively small portion, the chief says—possibly in reference to the varied authorities, judicial, executorial, clerical, military, &c., whose conflicting powers puzzled the natives—

“What I consider very bad is concealing the intentions, for there are many rooms in your house, which prevents their being all searched: the calico room is that of peace, but then there is the room of red garments and the room of black garments—these two rooms ought to be concealed in that with peace of God.”

It was necessary that this state paper should be duly laid before her Majesty. We are left in profound ignorance of the shape in which Heke may have received the announcement of its reception, but the Parliamentary papers contain a despatch from the Secretary of the Colonies to the Governor of New Zealand in these terms:—

“I have received your despatch of the 18th July last, forwarding a letter addressed by the New Zealand chief Heke to the Queen, in explanation of his view of the causes of the difficulties which have taken place throughout the colony, and I have to request you will acquaint the writer that I have laid that communication before her Majesty.”

But “the difficulties,” many of them of Heke’s own creation, were, as we have already hinted, conquered before he offered his intervention. The motives from which the armed forces in New Zealand gradually dissolved, as it were, into peaceful workmen, is in itself a significant symptom of the character of this remarkable people. They began to find that it was a far better speculation to enter into a partnership—however humble—with the Europeans, than to fight with them. They are not, it must be admitted, an imaginative or ideal people; they judge values by hard cash. Their superstitions were found to be entirely subservient to their interests—for instance, the inexorable tapu or taboo. A field which had been bought, but which was not to be given up, was found to be tabooed, and so a rifle which had been lent, and which the owner wanted back again. When a chief was wanted to fulfil a bargain, or was dunned by a creditor, he was found to be surrounded by the sacred tapu. This utilitarian spirit gradually undermined the zeal for national resistance. In fact, it was not national—it was personal and patrimonial. The chiefs and their followers who might side with the English had no reproaches of baseness, or unpatriotic desertion, to fear. Some of them were taken into service and employed as a police force—and proud they were of the character. One or two chiefs who were wounded in the British service received pensions. There came, as among the Sepoys, to be a competition to get into the service, which extinguished the insurrections. Those who could not be employed in the government did still better by embarking in agricultural, shipping, or commercial enterprise. There never, perhaps, in the history of the world, was so sudden a revulsion from bitter war to the energetic pursuit of the arts of peace as these people have exemplified.

After agricultural enterprise, the chief pursuit of the natives has been that of the miller. They appear to have entered on it with surprising rapidity. As the New Zealanders are very fond of letting her Majesty know all they are about, we have among the Parliamentary papers presented in the last session a letter to the Queen, with an account of the raising of one of the earliest grist mills, accompanied by a present of the meal ground in it.

“Governor Grey has been here at Otawhao and Rangiaohia, and has given us a plough; he also told us that Mr Morgan would arrange about some white man to teach us to plough, at which we were much pleased—and this year we commence to plough the ground. We have for a long time been desirous of this, but we are a poor people, and the majority of our pigs had been disposed of to pay for the mill, which was the reason that we did not plough; but now the governor has generously given us one, which has greatly rejoiced us; and we will persevere in ploughing the land. We have finished a water-mill, and paid for it entirely ourselves. We paid the white man who built it £200, which he obtained by the sale of pigs and flax—£20 being for flax, and £180 for pigs. The common labour we did ourselves—namely, building the dam, &c. &c. Our reason for constructing the mill was on account of having commenced to grow wheat at Rangiaohia. We were a year in collecting the requisite amount of money.

“O the Queen, we regard you with affection, because we have nothing to give you—because we, the Maoris, are a poor people; but we wish that you should see and also eat of the flour grown at Rangiaohia. Don’t find fault with what we send you, whether much or little: it is little in the presence of the Queen of England. We have nothing else except this quantity of flour to give you. Be graciously pleased with our present in order that our hearts may be glad.

“The schools for our children are very good, and we will now become civilised. But don’t send convicts here to our country. They will cause us trouble, and we will be afraid lest evil should be increased in our islands. This is all.

“Te Waru.

“Kahawui.”

The following document, dated a few months later, shows what rapid progress must have been made in the erection of mills:—

Return of Flour Mills now in operation, (22d August 1849,) within one district of the Province of New Ulster, the property of Aboriginal Natives (all but the last within a circuit of fifty miles of Otawhao.)

Name of principal Owner. Cost.

Cash. Labour.

Te Waru, £200 0 0 £50 0 0

Ti Tipa, 80 0 0 40 0 0

Tipa, 80 0 0 40 0 0

Manihera, 80 0 0 40 0 0

Pake, 330 0 0 40 0 0

Paora Te Patu, 100 0 0 40 0 0

£910 0 0 £250 0 0

The New Zealanders are, at the same time, large shipowners; and they have a shipping-list, published in English and Maori, with departures and arrivals of vessels owned and commanded by natives.

We find the Governor of New Zealand, on 7th March 1849, reporting,—

“During my journey through the extensive and fertile districts of the Waikato and Waissa, I was both impressed and gratified at the rapid advances in civilisation which the natives of that part of New Zealand have made during the last two years. Two flour-mills have already been constructed at their sole cost, and another water-mill is in course of erection. The natives of that district also grow wheat very extensively: at one place alone, the estimated extent of land under wheat is a thousand acres. They have also good orchards, with fruit-trees of the best kind, grafted and budded by themselves. They have extensive cultivations of Indian corn, potatoes, &c.; and they have acquired a considerable number of horses and horned stock. Altogether, I have never seen a more thriving or contented population in any part of the world.”

We may remark that, from so thinly peopled a country, so far off, we must not expect to receive authentic intelligence down to a recent period. The Parliamentary papers issued in the past session seldom contain intelligence later than 1849. On the 25th June of that year, the Lieutenant-General of New Munster reports:—

“At Otaki, the natives are still making rapid progress in civilisation, and the settlement is assuming the appearance of a neat European village. Many new houses of a superior kind have been built during the last eighteen months; a magnificent church has been erected, and, though not quite complete, is in a state which is usable; in fact, I have myself attended service there, when, I think, there could have been little short of 900 natives within its walls. More attention has been paid to neatness than was formerly the case; and most of the fences are not only substantially put up, but are cut evenly at the top, and present a very neat and clean appearance. The gardens are also more attended to; and the use of milk, butter, tea, &c., more appreciated in the domestic arrangements.

Other indications of the advancement of the native race, and of their growing confidence in the value of civilised institutions, are to be found in their frequent applications to the resident magistrates’ courts, whenever they consider themselves aggrieved, whether by Europeans or by other natives; and in the readiness with which they submit to and abide by the decisions. In these courts, during the last eighteen months, several cases of grave importance, between native and native, have been adjudicated upon, which would have formerly involved the life of the offender, and might have led to a general disturbance.”

The thoroughly and almost impetuously practical character of the natives, and their freedom from ideal influences, is shown in the manner in which they have welcomed the services of the medical profession.

The colonial surgeon, in his report for 1849, says,—

“The short, but, I apprehend, somewhat indiscreetly alarming account of small-pox, which was published in the native language some twelve months ago, made an extraordinarily powerful impression in this district on the Maori mind, creating, at the same time, a singularly urgent anxiety to be vaccinated. Hence, no sooner was it known that the antidote was in our possession, than not only the hospital and the town practitioners were besieged by applicants from far and near, but ex-professional gentlemen also were eagerly solicited to become operators in the cause, as if the enemy they so fearfully dreaded was at the threshold, and not a day to be safely lost; nay, so great was the panic among them, and so precocious, too, their intuition, that ere long they began to vaccinate one another; and finding that they could produce vesicles, or pustular blots any way like to these, vaccination hence went on in indiscriminate progress, to the neglect of all observances, and in hand-in-hand deterioration, which it is impossible now, with any probability of truth, to estimate or surmise.”

As an equitable balance of the hard and almost selfish character which we have attributed to these people, let us conclude by saying, that many documents and works which we have perused in reference to them, convince us that they are an eminently good-hearted race. Several instances are recorded where they have made considerable sacrifices to serve Europeans to whom they were under obligations; and in more than one instance, their communities have subscribed to relieve distress caused by fire, shipwreck, or inundation—a form of generosity eminently indicative of civilisation.

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