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.
Cook again touched at New Zealand in the course of his third voyage, and this time succeeded in maintaining friendly relations with the Maoris during a short visit. But when the story of Cook’s voyage was published in later years the people of Europe conceived a deep horror of these fierce man-eating savages.
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
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
