THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Marlborough Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1251, 3 December 1880, Page 4

THE EARLY HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

LECTURE BY DR T M. HOCKEN, OP

DUNEDIN.

(From the Otago Witness.)

No doubt this was the first idea of a Maori king—an ■ idea which* years afterwards, carried to its conclusion in the

person of Potatan, caused so much war and bloodshed amongst onr fellow settlers, and f has so, seriously impeded the progress of affairs in the North Island—a condition of things which unhappily yet reuiaius in the newer forms of Hauhauism and of Te Whiti’a dogmatism. Thereforth Hongi directed all his energies to the proouraooe of guns and gunpowder, ,He begged them from his new-found friends, and he converted his numerous and valuable presents into them, and immediately bn his return he armed a great war-party witn the deadly weapons, and with them he carried death and destruction to the most distant tribes—the Thames, Waikato, Taranaki—who could but feebly contend with their own Nativo dubs andspears. Wherever be went he was' victorious, and for seven long years be carried on this bloody warfare, in which it Is computed that between ,20,000 and 30,000 fell. Baskets of human flesh were sent as presents to his distant friends, and cannibal feasts were mord numerous than perhaps they had ever been. But out of this evil good came, and further preparation was made for ooming colonisation The vanquished saw they must fight the viotor wijth his own weapons, and to procure these they left no stone unturned. A rapidly increasing trade for those implements of warfare sprang up with Sydney. The Governor of New South Wales tried in vain to stop the bloody traffic. Arms and powder, and nothing but them, would .they, have for barter,. Twenty or thirty muskets would purchase a small shipload of flax dressed. . In 1830,; _ vessels of 6000 tons in the aggregate cleared out of Sydney for New Zealand, and returned with between 2000 and 8000 tons of flax—a quantity indicative of an immense amount of labour on the part.of the Natives. To i our shame be it said that another form of barter was for preserved, and tat oped heads, which were kept as curiosities, or sent to distant museums. Not only were the heads of those sold who had fallen in battle, but still further to meet the'traffic, the •laves wero elaborately tatooed —a lengthy and oruel operation—and when the process was complete, bad their heads cat off and preserved by smoking, and these were then sold. To stop this. Governor Darling inflicted a fine of £4O, with the publication of the offender’s name if caught. Some of the ship captains were a disgraoe to the name of British sailor: for hire they would carry in their vessels from one part

of the islands to another, war par ios and

would aid and abet them in their sudden add hnexpeoted attack on the defenceless stranger. One Instance of this. and I have, done with these tales of horror .I do but recount them that you may form some idea of the barbarous feuds that disfigured this beautiful land, within the memory of many now living, and that you may readily see how any project to colon iso such a country was no sooner formed than abandoned. In; 1830, Stewart, captain of a whaler, conveyed the celebra'ed chief Rauparaha and 80 warriors to Banks Peninsula, there to avenge the death of thoir .friend Te Pahi. Arrived there, they hid below in the cabin of the vessel. Steward falsely represented himself as trading for flax, and invited the unsuspecting Natives

on board, amongst them being the chief Tamaiharanui, bis wife and daughter. - fDesberiding into the cabin this chief mot " face : to face the cruel Rauparaha, who, 11 drawing up Tamaiharjanui’s lip, said, “There are tbe teeth that ate my father.” Instantly all were massacred except Tamai- ' baranui, his wife and daughter, who were ' kept for torture. Rauparaha?, warriors ftheniv landed, and slew right and left. Captain Stewart then put to sea. be hiro- ; self, 1 it is said, partaking of the human ■ which’ was cooked bn board. The “‘most fearful orgies were, kept up, during whioh the three poor captives bad to witness’-the 'indignities passed on their dead relatives’ bodies. The distressed

mother, by, her husband’s orders, strangled - her daughter, a beautiful girl of 16. This act so enraged Rauparaha that he sucked Tauoaiharanui’s blood from a flowing vein, J,. ; nnd kilWd him by thrusting into Mb body .... a rod-hot ramrod, Stewart was afterwards tried, at the ..Supreme Court, New South Walos, . for hii share in tbe matter, but escaped punishment, for want of evidence. New Zealand had been a dependency of

' i,f New South Wales since 1814, when Mr ; K«ndall;the : missionary, and the chiefs ' Hongi and Ruatara were made magistrates, ; and this 'was the first germ of British rule in New Zealand. Suoh lawless doings of ... Europeans;as,have already been recorded necessitated a further exteosioo of legislation, and consequently in 1823 and 1828 Acts of Parliament were passed whereby tbe powers and jurisdiction of the various Courts of New South Wales were extended

to the British "subjects in New Zealand. As oan readily be imagined the difficulty expense of procuring evidence rendered these Acts almost a dead letter and useless. ; Grime was frequent in the little European : settlement, and went unpunished unless by extemporised law of Judge Lynjijb., missionaries were < few «nd scattered, and almost powerless except the Natives, with whom their exemplary lives and their knowledge of the useful arts secured them high favor and influence—an influence which the whalers lost no opportunity of undermining. And amongst other eauses it is certain that the evil deeds which the missionaries were •constantly witnessing at the hands of the

lowest of their countrymen led years afterwards to offer considerable opposition to the settlement of the country by t e colonists- The first real attempt at founding a settlement in New Zealand was in 1825-r- a year of much speculation and of muoh misery. A Colonel Nioholls, of the Marines, had collected a great deal of valuable information respecting the country, and submitted his plans' But unsuccessfully, to Lord Bathurst, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. Thus unfortunate, he succeeded in 'interesting his uncle, Colonel Torrens, whose nephew of the same name is so well aud favorably known in connection with th* Land Act, Through Colonel Torrens’ exertions a company w a formed in London, composed of 15 influential members, with the Earl of Durham as chairman. The views of the Company were expreesad to Mr Huskisson, the president of the Board of Trade, who gave his sanction to the proposal and promised a Royal charter in case the preliminary expedition should prove successful. A ship—the Rosanna, I think, was her name—was fitted out under the charge of Captain Herd, the company’s agent, and sailed with about 60 settlers—artisaus chiefly., The site of the settlement was chosen near the mouth of the Hokianga River, on the West Coast —indeed, the spoils known to this day as Herd’s Point—and here a purchase of land was made. Unfortunately for the expedition, ihe New Zealanders were enjoying their usual pastime—at war with some neighbouring tribe—and this together with the terrifying scene of a war dance in which they were engaged, so alarmed the would-be settlers that, like Tasman 200 years before, they tripped anchor and sailed for Sydney £20,000 was lost in this speculation ; and thus disastrously : ended the first attempt at colonisation.

(To be continued.)