A SOLDIER IN EARLY N.Z.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31071, 28 May 1966, Page 4

A SOLDIER IN EARLY N.Z.

[Reviewed by R.C.LJ The Journal of Ensign Best 1837-1843. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nancy M. Taylor. A Turnbull Library Monograph. Government Printer 465 pp.

During the five years encompassed by this journal, its author a young armyofficer, was stationed first in New South Wales, then on Norfolk Island, and after that in New Zealand. From New Zealand he went to India where he died in battle at the age of 30. The journal begins with a description of the author’s voyage to New South Wales from England in 1837, in the convict ship James Pattison. He was a member of the guard placed in charge of the 270 convicts aboard. With the arrival of the James Pattison in Sydney harbour on October 25, 1837, Ensign Best found himself in a new environment, and the second section of his journal is taken up with his employments and diversions in the convict colony at New South Wales. The diarist found much to occupy his ample leisure time. During the ten months that he served in New South Wales, he made a collection of beetles and read a number of books. When occasion offered he went shooting wild fowl or hunted wallabies, usually taking with him on these outings his bulldog bitch. Nettle. There are moments of high mirth in his narrative, as for example in its account of a picnic which Best attended at Hobartvilie in New South Wales, when the effect of some potent ale on the ladies □resent was such as to make them quite fearless in riding their horses over fallen trees.

In August, 1838, Best received orders to sail with part of his regiment to Norfolk Island. The island was then a much more habitable place than it had been in the early days of the convict settlement there. In 1790, its 500 inhabitants mostly convicts, might have starved to death, but for the sea birds which they caught daily by the thousand to supplement their meagre diet. Contrast with this the lovely appearance it presented to Ensign Rest, whose journal records that “in the space of a few acres” there could be seen “the English Oak, the N.I. Pine, Coffee. Bananas, Loquats, Guavas, Peaches, Staw berries, Pine apples. Melons, the Cabbage Palm and th? different Fern trees in all their beautiful shapes and every kind of vegetable 1 know of except yams.”

Amidst these idyllic surroundings he was to be quartered for 18 months, and to live like a gentleman, with a servant, a stockman and a gardener to do his bidding His duties were by no means onerous. All they amounted to when he was “officer of the week,” were as follows: “Mount the Guards at 10 a.m. See about 100 men drink Grog at 11 and eat dinner at 12 and visit the Guards by day and night." It is only near the end of the Norfolk Island section of

the journal that the treatment and the behaviour of the convicts are mentioned by him. To compensate for what he has left unsaid, Mrs Taylor—in her excellent introduction to his journal, has devoted over seven pages to the Norfolk Island penal station. In September, 1839, the Island garrison was withdrawn. It was comprised entirely of the 80th Regiment of Foot. In April of the next year, part of the regiment, including Best (who was by this time a lieutenant), was sent with Major Bunbury in command, to New Zealand. This move was made in response to the urgent representations of Governor Hobson who was recovering from a paralytic stroke.

Best had hardly set foot in Kororareka, at the Bay of Islands, when he was called upon with his regiment to quell a disturbance outside the courthouse, which was surrounded by some 300 wellarmed Maoris who were demanding that one of their number who had been apprehended for the murder of a white man, should be handed over to them.

There is in Best’s journal much evidence of the difficulty with which the Maoris adjusted themselves to British law. His own view in this matter was that laws could not “be forced down the Mauries throat at the point of the bayonet,” but needed time for their quiet adoption. And yet, he writes: “If it should be necessary to impress them with a sense of our power, an example must be made which will be the Terror of the nation for years to come.” He was not alone in thinking so. In May, 1840, Governor Hobson sent 30 soldiers, with Lieutenant Best in command, to Port Nicholson. With them there was sent also the acting colonial secretary, W. Shortland, J.P., to proclaim the Queen’s sovereignty and hoist the Union Jack in the new settlement there. The troops were quartered in tents which “incessant storms of wind and rain” blew down One stormy night, Best bolted out of his tent just in time to escape its coming down about his ears.

The physical appearance of Wellington in these early years when the Maoris were still drawing up their canoes on the beaches there, is well described in Best’s journal. Not far from the present location of Rongotai aerodrome, he went duck shooting in a large lagoon that was called Burnham Water. . . . With a party of Maoris he tramped along the coast of Palliser Bay to Lake Wairarapa. He believed that he was the first white man to have penetrated this region, but—as Mrs Taylor points out in a footnote—William Deans had been there before him. On March 31, 1841, Lieutenant Best set out with Dr. Dieffenbach from Auckland on a journey to the Waikato, and thence to Lake Taupo. For part of the way they were accompanied by Captain W. C. Symonds and two policemen who were in search of a couple of prisoners who had escaped from the gaol at Russell and had made their way into the interior. The route followed on this expedition was coastwise from Manukau Heads to Kawhia, from which point the party travelled inland to Otawhao (now Te Awamutu). Here the prisoners were found. It appears that a Maori chief had been asked by a mis-

sionary, the Rev. John Morgan, to take charge of them. Before handing them over to Captain Symonds, the chief asked to be paid for the trouble he had been put to in looking after them. “He enumerated”—writes Best — “all the pigs he had killed for their eating, the water which had been fetched for their especial use, the potatoes, pumpkins, melons, kumeras and other vegetables all which had been supplied in unknown quantities to satisfy their voracious appetites.” On the remaining part of the journey to Taupo, the travellers, with their Maori guides, crossed rivers and swamps and were sometimes up to their waists in water In open country a good pace was maintained, but in the forest the going was more difficult. Best states that at one stage he was “driver nearly mad” by the supplejacks that pulled off his cap, entwined his gun and, sent him sprawling. Dr Dieffenbach’s account of this journey is included in his book entitled “Travels in New Zealand” which was published in London in 1843. To compare his narrative with Best’s is a fascinating study. It is worth noting that some of the missionaries encountered on this journey such as the Revs R. Maunsell and J. Whiteley, were also in the habit of keeping daily journals, and that Mrs Taylor has used their manuscripts, where necessary, to clarify or to confirm what Best has written. Best was to make a second journey to the Waikato. In April, 1842, he set out once more from Auckland — this time in company with Governor Hobson, the Chief Justice William Martin (later Sir William), and Edward Shortland. The Governor had been feeling the strain of office and, considering his broken health, it was rather plucky of him to undertake such a journey. It was the last brief respite he enjoyed from the persecution and public clamour that were to hasten his death: for

he died only five months later.

Best, who had occasionally acted as A.D.C. to Governor Hobson, and who now bore tire rank of captain, was asked to arrange the funeral. This, he writes. “1 willingly did and thus had an opportunity of rendering the last service which my kind friend would ever require at my hands.” The New Zealand portion of Best’s journal (pages 215400), is simply studded with references to the Maoris, including a number of chiefs, whom he conversed with from time to time. Best remarks upon their cultivations, their house-building, their embracing the Christian beliefs, and in some cases their rejection of them. As for their hospitality, he had never seen anything to surpass it. And the beauty of Maori girls fairly captivated him. He came under the spell of Maori oratory, and once, while on an expedition to Tauranga, he and his companion, Edward Shortland, spent an evening collecting some Maori songs which are included in this journal. In brief, Best won the respect and affection of the Maori people amongst whom he went about, and the New Zealand section of the journal will surely rank as one of the most perceptive and readable accounts of life in this country during its first three years as a Crown colony. The Alexander Turnbull Library first acquired the manuscript of Best’s journal only eleven years ago. The decision to publish it was indeed a commendable one. and the journal could hardly have found a more competent and painstaking editor than it has had in Mrs Taylor. Her footnotes, which number close on 500, reveal the great variety of sources she has drawn upon to elucidate and amplify Best’s narrative. The volume is rounded off with 21 appendices, a list of “sources used,” and an index: plates and maps accompany the text.