Traveller in a strange new world

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33941, 6 September 1975, Page 10

Traveller in a strange new world

Travels in New Zealand. By Ernst Dieffenbach. Capper Press reprint. 827 pp (two volumes). N.Z. price $26. The German surgeon and naturalist to the New Zealand Company, Ernst Dieffenbach. arrived in New Zealand with the official company party in the Tory in 1839. He stayed for two years and on his return to Europe wrote a vast and comprehensive account of the country, its people, and the prospects for settlement.

In retrospect, it seems that almost every literate visitor to New Zealand felt obliged in those times to record his impressions and adventures. Victorian audiences found in New Zealand a land of Wonders at the end of the world, the last frontier of maritime exploration. They never tired of reading about it, and most of the authors also included at least a veneer of scientific description. Dieffenbach did much more than cater to the popular taste for sensation. He was one of the last of

the truly all-round scholars, a man whose knowledge and interests embraced not one specialised field, but many. Nor was he content to work from material gathered by others. He went to see for himself. And so his first volume includes accounts of the geography, geology, climate, flora and fauna of much of the North Island and the Cook Strait region. The second volume includes what is still one of the best accounts of the condition, customs and beliefs of the Maoris on the eve of European settlement, along with a surprisingly thorough dictionary and grammar of the Maori language. Dieffenbach wrote elegantly in English which was, for him. a foreign language. Of the Maoris, for example, he said: “The children of both sexes, with their free, open and confident behaviour, have always been my favourites. Brought up in the society of the adults, partaking in the councils of their fathers, their mental faculties became awakened and sharpened

earlier than is the case in more civilised countries. But I must not forget to pay my tribute of praise to the old: the old women especially are the best natured and kindest creatures imaginable, and the traveller is sure to receive a smile and a welcome from them,, if no one else shows any intention of befriending him. On many matters, of course, Dieffenbach has been superseded by later researchers. None has exceeded him in a breadth of interest; few can have failed to draw help from the foundations he laid in a variety of disciplines.

“Travels in New Zealand” is an indispensible cornerstone to any collection of writings about early New Zealand. In an age of scientific adventurers he played no mean part. For sheer ability to collect and organise a wealth of material in the strange new world that was New Zealand in 1840 he had no equal. In spite of its price, the reprint of his writings deserves a wide readership.