THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Marlborough Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1249, 19 November 1880, Page 4

THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

X.EOTORH B 7 DR T. M. HOCKBN, Of DUNEDIN. (From the Otago Witness.) The following is the second of the series of lectures by Dr Hooken upon the above subjeot You will doubtless remember that in my last leoture I gave an account of the discovery of New Zealand by Tasman and afterwards by Cook, the visits of Frenoh vessels, the general development of the whale trade, and consequent intercourse between the European the Native, and oouoloded with the introduction of Christianity by Samuel Marsden, in 1814. In mentioning the various names given to this country of Staatenland, Terre Australo, and New Zealand, I omitted to say that this latter, the one it now retains, was given by Tasman, and so called after Zealand, the southernmost provinoe in Holland, his native oonntry. The practice of naming plaoes by the use of the prefix f ‘ New ” is almost barbarous—certainly clumsy— New Hebrides, New South Wales, New Caledonia for instance. It has descended to us in the form of New Zealand, perpetuated in New Plymouth, atfd'hkthV old provincial terms of New Munster, Ulster, anJ Leinster, applied respectively to the three Islands Dunedin narrowly esoaped being called New Edinburgh. For reasons whioh will be given when speaking more particularly of Otago, I am inolined to consider that the name of Dunedin was suggested by the late Rev. Dr Burns rather than by Mr Chambers, who, in an interesting memorandum, reoently sent to the City Council by Mr Bathgate, is mentioned as being the namegiver. Digressing Btill a little further in this matter of nomenclature, I may mention that persons possassed of little ingenuity and less taste have proposed from time to time various substitutes for the name Now Zealand — such are Zealandia, Brittannia, AustralAlbion, Victoria, Albiona, Erinia (from some fancied analogy to Ireland); and doubtless many others. The ioonoolast has not, however, yet appeared who can set up a title better than the one he would cast down. And now to assume the continuity of this leoture, and to speak of missionary labor. To do anything like justice to so interesting a subject would demand at least its own special leoture ; but my narrative would be quite incomplete were I to make but a passing reference to an agency which has always been recognised as being of the chief pioneers and promoters of a following colonisation. And this was especially the case in New Zealand. Missionary influence became a great power not only in the land amongst the Natives, but with the British Government, as will be seen further on. For 30 years after Samuel Marsden’a first visit this sway was almost undisputed, and then it oommenoed to decline from various causos. The English Church Mission established Paihia in the Bay of Islands, as a centre. Amongst them were those of Tauranga, the Hot Springs, Wanganui,; Waikato, and Otaki. I have visited many of these old stations, now deserted or desolate spots, or else converted to purposes of a far different character. Nothing brought back to me so vividly the bygone past of old New Zealand as wandering through these ruined remains. The once pretty garden—record of the missionary’s taste and solace—choked with weeds and undergrowth; the fences and hedge destroyed ; the quaint little ohnroh, with small overhanging belfry locked, silent, and rapidly going to deoay—'the bouse silent too, damp and mouldy, overrun and darkened with vinos and creepers, uow disorderly, onoe trim and well-oared for as they clustered round the low veraudah—the author and ocoupant of all this himself lying somewhere near—dead, and perhaps forgotten. Suoh scenes I have more than once seen, and very sad they are—food for muoh painful thought and retrospect. Of scenes like these are the antiquities of New Zealand ; and they indeed deserve the name. Surely people unthinkingly say that New Zealand is too new a country, that it has as yet little or no his'orioal interest and no antiquities. To my mind associations make antiquities, rather than great lapse of time. The greygrown ruins of the Rhine are but of yesterday when compared with the eternity of that river upon whose banks they crumble to deoay ; and yet do these banks and that river excite the idea of antiquity? The thin mists of two or three ages, or of a century, are quite sufficient, to my way of thinking, to invest the past with the desired halo. When thicker, they beooine more impenetrable, and it is thsn diffionlt to conjure through them visions of the dead and of their deeds. When treading the steps that Captain Cook and Samuol Marsden and these old missionaries trod, I oan readily see what they saw, hear what they said, and look upon the life that was around them. But the old abbey does not so readily recall to me the procession ; of cowl-clad monks whose solemn ohants once filled its aisles. Perhaps I oanriot see far enough through its stone walls; a prejudicial fondness for New Zealand may partly blind me; or perhaps, after all, my swans may be but little better than geese. The Wesleyan Mission originally oommenoed their mission in 18*22, at Waogaioa, the scene of the Boyd massacre, but they were driven from this foothold and then selected Hokianga, on the West Coast, as the centre of their operations. . It was then agreed between themselves and the Church Mission that the latter should oocupy the East and the former the West Coast of the Island. The Roman Catholics established a mission at Kororareka, in the Bay of Islands, in 1838, when Bishop Pompallier arrived. Amongst

the numerous minor dangers and trials to which the early missionary was exposed may be counted that to his gravity —had this been lost the results must have been disastrous to his influence and the success of his work. An amusing instance of this, and relating to the appearance presented sometimes by the New Zealander when at church, is well told by the Rev. W. Yate, one of the early superintendents of the Church Mission, and must have taxed to the utmost the gravity of the missionary. Ho says :—“ The importation of European articles of dress has much increased the wants of these people. At times they out a most grotesque appearance in their new clothing, as bow many articles soever a man may possess he will frequently manage to have them all on at once. His trousers, perhaps, will be tied round his neck, his shirt put on as trousers, and his jaoket the wrong way before, or turned inside out. The women, if they happen to have two or three gowns, will put them all on ; and they will manage so to arrange their dress as to have some part of each article visible I have seen a person come into the chapel at whose monsirois appearanoe I had the greatest difficulty to restrain a smile. The sleeves of an old gown have been, drawn on as a pair of stockings, two/ jmiall baskets fastened on and one gown over another so pftrtied that you could see the flounce of the body of a second, the sleeves of a third, and the collar of a fourth ; with a piece of an old striped shirt thrown carelessly over as a shawl, or a pair of trousers hung round the neok as a boa, but so arranged as not to conceal any other article of dress. I have seen a person thus decked and adorned enter a chapel in tbe midst of service without exoiting the slightest attention from the assembled congregation, to whom it did not appear at all strange.” From this extract we may conclude that vanity and the passions for dress exist as strongly in the bosoms of our brown as of our fair sisters. A few of the old missionaries still suvvico, but no longer missionaries, by name for they have long ceased to perform their original functions. (To be eontinued.)