NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

Evening Star, Issue 12866, 16 July 1906, Page 8

NEW ZEALAND HISTORY.

f ■ PROM AMERICAN SOURCES. f. [By Robert M'Nab, M.H.R.] ¥ I' No. 11. | The writer will conclude his notes on f- the above by giving an account of what v class of material his research disclosed as in the ports and cities of the j- New England States. The. places visited and examined were i> Saleny, Boston, New Bedford, Nantucket, | Providence, Newport, Philadelphia, Baljctimore, and Washington. Of these, New- < port and Providence were only examined f. m connection with one historical quesj tion. The Newport Historical Society . have long claimed that Captain Cook’s I, vessel, the old Endeavor, under a French > name and a French Hag, ended her days %. in Newport Harbor. To examine the - proof they had and to try to set the v matter finally at rest the port was visited 'f and all their material copied. In addi- : tion to their files, papers in Boston and ■ Washington were examined. As a result some altogether new material was unearthed, and when the search is concluded in London there should he ■i little further to add. The American , search had no sooner been completed than the writer was asked by the New South Wales authorities to look into the evidence and report to them, for placing amongst the Cook records in Sydney. All the towns visited had characteristics of their own in connection with the material they supplied. Salem had had the advantage of a captains’ club from about 1798 onwards. In their Museum were New Zealand curios dated 1802, 1807. and 1812. These they had procured in Sydney, and the letter of dedication of the 1812 collection is in the Museum. They are beautiful specimens of the carver’s are. At the writer’s suggestion Shotos of every one are being sent to It Hamilton, of the Wellington Museum, for particulars. Speaking generally of whalers, the information they obtained can only be got now in the Press of the day when chronicling their arrival, and giving bits of information about their doings, or from their logs. Newspaper references in Australian papers are very full—speaking of course, of an early date—but American papers everywhere perserve a conspiracy of silence on the doings of the whalers. A vessel would arrive after an absence of three years, and half an inch would record to the public all Ihe information given. From Ihe fact that this was universal in a country so interested in the whaling industry, the writer concludes that the ship-owners objected to giving away information which might be used by rival firms. The result of it all is to reduce enormously the available material, and was a great disappointment to the writer, throwing him back upon the logs only. Captains were not compelled to hand over their logs to any institution. The logs in existence to-day are therefore that small selection that societies or individuals gathered into collections out of pure curiosity. Fortunately at Salem they started early, and some 1.100 logs are in the collection. At other places historical societies even had not one single log. Only a fraction, therefore, of sailing captains logs are now to be found. Granted, however, that you get a of a whaling voyage to New Zealand in the early days, it depends upon the class of man the captain was whether you are one whit the wiser. If the captain was an ignorant man, or took no interest in his surroundings, the log is of no value. If the other way, you may drop across a perfect mine of wealth. That applies all over the Now England ports. The Salem captains ns a rule were a verv Wperior type of men—the finest in New England in their day. Enormous is the material lying in their logs at the Essex Institute dealing with all the places vis ted. The regrettable thing is that thire were not more who came to New Zealand. What (Muld be got was procured, however. The labors of the institute also enabled the writer to procure sketches of the identical vessels, to illustrate the type of craft which ; whaled upon our coast. . Outs;de of the historical societies it is ns difficult to procure material of that nature as it is with us. Although late in the day commencing, the societies are mostly alive now to the necessity of hunting up and only by accident can the visitor purchase anything of historical value. These historical societies also, as an im portant branch of their work, interest themselves in genealogical research. Tracing Back ancestry is a perfect craze with Ame ricans, the idea being either to find a prerevolutionary or a pre-Mayflower origin for the family. We have nothing in the colony corresponding to it at all, and at first blush it is so opposed to one’s preconceived idea of the tvpical American. In New B dford is a verv good col lection of logs. The New’ Bedford trade was a much later one than the Salem, and was purely whaling. When Nantucket fell away it became the greatest whaling centre in the world, and is so to this day, although the whaling trade is very small. The New Bedford men were quite a different class to the Salem, and while no information is got frbm them in the files of their old papi rs, very little is from their logs. The Dartmouth Historical Society are of recent origin, and, while doing good work in what they have saved, came into the field too late in the day. No port in Aimrica had the - chances that New Bedford had for historical work, had only U had a society at the first like the East India Marine. As accounting for the disappearance of the manuscripts and logs of the old whaling fleet, the writer was told that during the Civil War the price of old paper ro-e to such a figure that every attic was overhauled, and papers littered with the dust of ages brought forth, tempted by the price, to be sold for general purposes. Into this mad strom went the logs and shipping papers, which to-day would be priceless. At Nantucket the writer was fortunate enough to find a log dealing with “ bay whaling ’ on the New Zealand coast in the . thirties. Readers well know that the black whale was attacked during tho season it frequented the bays of our colony, and for v several months at that season the vessels ;; would anchor in the bays of the East Coast, and, sending out the" boats, attack anv ; whales coming in. In this lot* is a full description of almost every incident which took place during these periods. There is a dissertation upon the interpreters, or “tonguers,” as they were called, tinir tariff , and their duties. The natives of Cloudy : Bay, the scene of the whaling, were visited . and described. The system r»f scouring the bay aiter the whales and of the different whales working in concert is dp. scrib’d. Then there are the disputes which . arise about escaped whales afterwards capi tured, and the appointment of arbitrators to decide ownership. Finally, there is an interview do cribed with old Te Raupaniba on hb return from a marauding expedition, serving the double purpose of giving an estimate of that crafty old scoundrel and firing the exact date of his southern expedition. Logs like these, however, are very scarce, only one having bon obtained amongst the many whaling ones preserved Students of history in New Zealand ex- - pressed the opinion to the writer that Nantucket would yield a rich harvest to the student. That was not so. It is only a small place, and though its historical society 5 have a nice little co’lection, it does not give a hint of the former glories of the place Its Pre-o files have the same stolid silence about whaling narrative, and its in ormation though valuable in the mass, is nothing to . what the opportunities for acquiring it ; were.

Some of the rncidonto in connection with New Zealand history, about which even early writers like Pol nek have erred, notably the General Gates massacres, on the shores of Foveaux Strait, were cleared up, and the files found in Boston, on which Polack founded his story That, and something new about tire relief of the men on the Snares, were the only seeding material oh’ained. Enough, however, wars got to show that the idea of a very extensive American sealing trade with New Zealand prior to the willing is a mistake, and it is the writer’s opinion that the name of practically every American scaling vessel to New Zealand can be procured from Australian sources, with the help of wellknown puWished voyages. The writer hd honor! to ggt ffpabng iirfrrrrmtiraa out

of sealing logs, which, dealing with tlie coast, and not the open sea, would have been very valuable, but none dealing with New Zetland was found. At the Bay of Islands so many American vessels were to be found during the thirties that the United States Government appointed a consul there, and while at Washington the office of the Department of State was visited, and the paper* connected with the Bay of Islands Consulate were not only submitted for perusal, but every facility was given to transcribe whatever was deemed of value. Many interesting documents and scraps of New Zealand history He in that immense pile overlooking the White House. . If the experience of the writer gives ham authority to advise other investigators of history in America, it is directed towards urging them make their visit first to Washington. Tnere, so far as newspaper files are concerned, will be found the records of every one of the New England ports, and the places themselves require to lie visited only for tho purpose of looking up any nuinir'CTipts they may possess. As a matter of fact, paper files are more complete in Washington than in the towns they come from, and the arran ements for their exam ina'ion in the Congressional Library are marvellous. Altogolh r, it has been to the writer a delightful holiday, and if when the material collected dimes to be submitted to the public their verdict is that history has benefited by the visit, there will remain nothing further to add to the writer’s pleasure.