A VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

Hokitika Guardian, 28 August 1926, Page 4

A VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

(By Ethel Turner, in the Sydney “ Herald.”) Mho discovered New Zealand? The question rose idly as some of us leaned over the ship’s rail watching the stern coastline emerge from the rosy-purple.? that dawn had left trailing behind iber. Someone ventured “ Captain Cook,” but was swiftly crushed. “ Captain Cook had only discovered Australia,” someone hazarded. “ Tasman,” then added; “Oh, no, lie discovered Tasmania, of course.” And, until a few weeks ago, when I began digging into the country’s past. T was equally hazy, though I. too, had had a notion that it was one of these

gentlemen. The French lav a claim, hut not with the vigour of much, substantiation. They sav that Rinot do Gonncville’s records show that he sailed from Havre in 1503, landed in a country supposed to he New Zealand, stayed there for several months, and brought hack a native who married one of his relatives. There exists in France a record of this early navigator’s, voyage, written by his grandson in 1663. and named “ .Memoirs toucahnt l’Estnhlissemcnt d’uno Christienne dans la Terre Australe.” Spain lays a claim. Juan do Fernandez sighted Easter Island, it is allowed. ' The claim—disputed—is that he sighted also the continent of Australia or New Zealand. No- doubt, whatever is cast on the fact that the intrepid Dutchman. Tasman, sent by Van Diemen with the largo order that lie was to discover “certain islands of gold and silver supposed to lie oast of Japan,” found Tasmania, which he loyally named \ an Diemen after his patron. Then lie turned oast, and in eight days was staring at some part of the rugged coastline about which we were specu-

lating. He named the new land “Land of the States.” the States being, of course. Holland. He did not consider it to ho one of the gold and silver isles ol which lie was in search; he thought he was cruising along a coast of the gieat Antarctic continent.

Presently he anchored in the great water that lies between North and South Island. Cook’s Strait.

TTe did not say. as David said unto God. “ 1 am in a great strait.” Tie i'bought 't was merely a fine hay. But he effected no landing. The one-time invaders, our Polynesian Maoris. s"> fiercely opposed the landing of the white-skinned invaders that they killed several of the boat’s crew. On this Tasman named the place “ Murderers Rnv.“ and sailed away again. “Massacre Pay ” is the slightly softer name the place is called to-day. The first to set a foot on shore—that it the first of whom we have undisputed records—was our intrepid Yorkshireman. Captain Cook, in 1769. who effected landings and surveyed the coast, hut was fiercely prevented from nenetrating inland by the Maoris.

Cook formally annexed the land foij Great Britain. But Great Britain was having enough trouble with her colonies for the moment without adding to the number. Great Britain was at grips with America, struggling so desperately for its independence. With George Washington engaging her right arm, Britain could not stay to listen to James Cook patiently plucking at her left, and advising her to take over a brand new colony. For years she would not trouble. But the land was discovered now, and other navigators sailed to its shores, French and Spanii h ones again. Russian and American. They came back with tales of the mighty Kauri timbers that would make unsurpassable* masts, of the flax that was growing everywhere, of the whales along the shores. A series of irregular expeditions from various lands followed in •search of such treasures.

The Maoris by this were growing used to the putting in of tho white men’s (the pakelia’s) ships. They became less hostile, and soon were bartering flax and treasure of various kinds for the pakeha’s marvellous fire-spilling muskets with which they might seek to exterminate neighbouring enemy tribes. Before the ceaseless endeavours of the missionaries (come to seek to undo the mischief of the traders, and to teach. Christianity) brought a degree of peace, the . Maoris, armed with the weapon that was so much deadlier than the worst of their own spears, had reduced their own numbers up and down the islands by vast numbers. AKAROA AND SOME EARLY FOOTPRINTS.

Even seventy years after Cook had fallen dead in a. Hawaiian island at the hands of a native, nor England nor France nor Spain bad troubled to formally annex the new land, though there were tiny English and French settlements here and there by this. But now in London an ardent advocate of colonisation, one 'Wakefield, got together a New Zealand Company, and prepared to send a shipload of settlers out and an agent buy land for them wholesale. Practically at the same moment it was found that an expedition for the same purpose was starting from Franco. Now, of course, Britain had to move. She despatched a man-o’-war, with Captain Hobson, R.X., on hoard, with authority to annex New Zealand to Australia by peaceful arrangements with the natives. Hobson landed at. the north of North Island (the Bay of Islands), and unfurled the English flag there in January, 1840. Tho Maoris made no resistance, since by a treaty their fisheries and forest lands were secured to them. But there was a little, just a little, “ French affair ’’ before matters were quite concluded, and New Zealand to-day rather likes tho flavour of it mid the touch of romance. And it knows that its tourists like it. Tourists are always glad to have a canoe to pick up romance and history by the wayside. It justifies the cost of petrol and railway tickets. Half-way down South Island, about 50 miles from where Christchurch lies on its English Canterbury Plains, juts ruggedly out into the ocean Banks Peninsular—Sir Joseph Banks’ Peninsular, of course. Nine miles up into flic rugged peninsular runs a fiord named Akaroa, so very ,blue, so very lovely and unsophisticated, that though she meant only to stay there a few hours this tourist found herself staying on for several days.

A Frenchman, in 1840—L’Anglois, captain of a whaler—came similarly under the spell of the place. He decided, on one of ihe many whaling expeditions despatched from the headquarters, that such a jewel must belong to T.a Belle Franco. By gifts and promises he induced the Maoris to undertake to cede all Banks Peninsular to France. Then he returned to that country himself, got together a company of 05 emigrants, induced the Government to lend him a ship, tho Comte de Paris, and a frigate, L’Aubc, commended by Commander Lavand, and set out for Akaroa with all the

high hopes of a Pilgrim Father on board the Mayflower. But the news of his hold undertaking bad reached the Bav of Island, and Captain Hobson—nay, lie had bis hastily-made commission of first of the very first Lieutenant-Governors of New Zealand in his pocket. A very short time before the Comte de Paris and the I,’Aube came up the blue waters of Akarosi the British mim-o’-wnr Britomart had glided majestically in and bad nailed the British flag to a newj flagstaff. 1 No, there wore no broadsides; no thundering hatlleholts Hew ’ from the three-deckers (New Zealand is just a little reluctant to admit this, and some . of the early accounts rather enjoyed enhancing this affair; hut, as a mat- 1 ter of fact, the countries settled the , matter peaceably.) The 65 French emi- 1 grants settled down in Aharon, according to their original plan, but it was an Akaroa that was now, along with all the rest of New Zealand, a British colony.