RUSSIANS IN WAKE OF COOK

Press, 29 September 1979, Page 17

RUSSIANS IN WAKE OF COOK

Bellingshausen: A Visit to New Zealand: 1820. By Glynn Barratt. Dunmore Press, 1979. 195 pp. $16.50. (Reviewed by Angus Ross)

Such has been the interest in preEuropean New Zealand that practically all non-British visitors to this country before 1840 have long since had their accounts of their experiences published in English. The Russian visit of May and June 1820, which was a minor incident for the Bellingshausen-Lazarev Antarctic Expedition of 1819-21, has had to wait till 1979 for the publication in an English translation of the relevant parts of the reports written by the leading members of that voyage. Mow the Professor of Russian at Carleton University, Ottawa, who recently spent nearly two years at the Waikato University. has made available the product of some years of research in Russia where he tracked

down both the papers and the museum specimens presented by Bellingshausen and his scientific observers. Professor Barratt did not write his book primarily for popular consumption, although some general readers will find certain sections of considerable interest. This book is essentially a scholarly production which will warrant the attention of historians and ethnologists, more especially of those concerned with Maori studies. The Russian visitors of 1820 stayed less than a fortnight in Mew Zealand. They spent virtually the whole of that time in Queen Charlotte Sound, concentrating much of their time and subsequent reports on the Maori inhabitants of that region. Bellingshausen was deliberately following in the footsteps of Captain James Cook largely because the Imperial Russian Navy had long held up Cook as an example in the twin fields .(rf oceanic discovery and of the

relations to be established with the native peoples encountered. The Russian reports have a unique value for those interested in Maori culture in that part of the South Island. This is so because most accounts of the Maori after Cook’s day are devoted to the Bay of Islands or other northern centres. In addition. the people described by the Russians were Rangitane and Ngati-Apa tribesmen who were, within a decade, exterminated by Te Rauparaha and his Taranaki allies under Te Puoho. In his somewhat sober factual introduction. Professor Barratt fills in the historical background to the Russian visit, supplies some biographical detail about the men reporting on New Zealand, and comments on the texts he has unearthed and used. The principal and most interesting section of the book provides a straightforward translation of the texts of five Russian members of the expedition. Professor Barratt then makes his own observations on the Russian findings on Maori attitudes, food, agriculture, buildings, music, and canoes. Then follows an important section, illustrated by some 34 plates, dealing with the Maori artifacts housed in the Mikl u k h O-Maklay Institute of Ethnography in Leningrad and the Kazan Museum. Students of Maori material culture in its near preEuropean state will find this section fascinating. The descriptions and the photographs of the paddles, the carved feather-boxes, the cloaks and other items, show Professor Barratt to be much more than a student of Russian language and literature. D. R. Simmons, ethnologist at Auckland Museum, contributes an informative appendix on the Leningrad collection. Simmons, incidentally, is one of a group of ten New Zealand authorities — Michael Trotter of Canterbury Museum is another — to whom the author acknowledges his indebtedness. This book may not make for the easiest of reading but those who make the effort will almost certainly be rewarded.