AMAZING GROWTH OF TRADE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22861, 16 October 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMAZING GROWTH OF TRADE

A New Zealand Century By MATANGA MANY visitors to New Zealand are frankly surprised to find hero so much evidence of material progress in the short space of time since these islands were first peopled in scattered spots by a few Europeans. "Not a hundred years of British occupation, and now this!" is a typical comment. Of course these visitors see much with ' w hich to fine! fault, especially if they desire elaborate ease of tourist travel; but even about such amenities they are usually respectful, and / w h en they recall the brief span of j-ears between the beginnings and the achievements they easily voice their wonder.' In reality, more than a hundred years have passed since the first incursion of Europeans as settlers —it is the approach of the centenary of British rule that prompts the phrase "not a hundred years" —yet little more than a century bridges the progress from New Zealand's prinial commerce with ' the outer world to the present complexity of oversea "business intercourse, from the shipping of whale-oil and sealskins to the making of a trade treaty with Germany for the taking of our butter and fruit in exchange • for certain manufactures betokening a high level of civilisation. The historical meaning of this latest commercial event cannot bo missed by any alert to note perspective in human story. Tribal Agents-General To get a vivid view of the great change wrought by the years it is ' enough to look at one of the handful of business interests first attracting European attention to this distant j cluster of islands in the South Sea. In this handful, before whaling and seal"i ing had run their eager course, were also kauri spars for the Royal Navy, timber of other sorts, much flax, some pork and vegetable food-supplies for shipping, and (strangest, most gruesome of exports) preserved, tattooed Maori heads, prized, as unique curios worth no little money "per head." Among these exports, flax offered for a while a lucrative opportunity of trade. . Cargoes of flax, in the dressing of which the Maori, particularly his womankind, was notably expert, were often easv to obtain. In many regions

it grew abundantly, and the Maori, > then instinctively industrious, was soon ready to gather and prepare it for shipping, in return for muskets, powder, metal, tools and various trade-goods, some of them eloquently known to traders as "Yankee notions,'' and all in strong native demand. Prior to the European • incursion the Maori had neither experience nor need of buying and selling, but he quickly adopted the method of barter and soon to understand enough of what a Cab- £ inet Minister has lately described as "the nivstcrv of money" to vie with the Pakeha in shrewd bargaining. Howr*er, tho need for an intermediary Pakeha-Mauri,'made a member of the tribe for precisely this purpose, was the earliest resort. Such a tribal agent-general often had, after the earliest days of this development, a dignified and pleasant life, providing he loyally adhered to the customs of the tribe virtually owning him and particularly the injunctions of his protecting chief. But quite as often, in some localities, his life was beset by perils and irksome restric- ' tions.

Barnet Bums One of these luckless flax-agents—• their story is not always easy to unravel—was Barnet Burns, who in 1827 left England as a sailor, got his discharge at Port Jackson, came on to New Zealand after a while in a ship trading for flax, and became so enamoured of the new country that he entered into an agreement with "L. Baron Montefiore, Esq." (to quote the terms of the binding document) "to sail to the port of Mahia, in New Zealand, there and then to commence "bartering with the natives, for flax, etc. ... to act as the sole and entire -agent of the said L. Montefiore, at the aforesaid port of Mahia, or at any other port or place to which he may hereafter be directed to proceed." * In 1829 Barnet Burns proceeded to Mahia from Port Jackson, the vessel by which he sailed calling at Kawhia, Mokau r Taranaki and Kapiti before he was left at his destination, where he landed as a complete stranger, without a dwelling and without any other white man within a hundred miles. Worse than all this was the immediate departure of the chief with whom ha wag particularly to trade. Never daring to sleep without a musket by his side, he was in deadly terror until his own "trading chief" returned, and soon afterwards, having in the meantime taken as wife the daughter of another chief, he was superseded by another agent and with only a few trade-goods -given him in lieu of salary was left to his own resources. ■ '< threatened with the plundering of his little stock, he put to sea with a few friendly natives in a canoe, bound for Poverty,, Bay. There he was "received comfortably enough," but risks multiplied, in spite of his tactful yielding to constraint to fight with his n«w ' friends in an intertribal battle, and at length he was captured by the enemy snu escaped death only by consenting to be tattooed in token of joining his captors' tribe. ■* Cannibal Orgies On his own account he a ■ Quantity of flax and effected a shipWent. But after further dangers in the midst of fighting and cannibal orgies, being compelled to undergo more tattooing, he realised the hope- ; lessness of winning security, although experiences had made him proficient |n the native speech, and he at length, in critical circumstances, boarded a ship ■bound for New South Wales, After an absence of eight years, all filled with harassing adventures, he was again in England, finding himself no less an object of curiosity than of commiseration. Burns' experience was not by any gleans singular. In describing "New Zealand in 1837" as he well knew it, Polack appropriately says—- , The difficulties with which European flaxcollectors have hail to contend in pursuance °f their duties to the merchants who employed tlieni, while residing among the "stives, have been so manifold that a recital of many of their hardships would never obtain credit anient,' the "gentlemen of England, *ho hie at home at ease." By 1837 the flax trade had declined seriously. Whereas in 1831 not less than a thousand tons were cleared within fourteen days from the Custom House of Port Jackson,'scarcely a hundred tons were cleared thence in the first six months of 1837: the native wars, which Prevented much flax from being dressed for export, almost ruined the trade, "lit, proceeding' Well or ill, that staple trade and its vicissitudes present an impressive contrast to the oversea commerce in which New Zealand is engaged so fully and variouslv in these days not fc; fkr removed by reckoning of years.