CHAPTER X

GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND

Its discovery by Tasman-Mountains-Harbours-Cultivation-Trees-Suitability of Thames River for colonisation-Climate-Absence of native quadrupeds - Birds - Insects - Fish - Plants - Native and introduced vegetables-Absence of fruits-New Zealand flax-Population-Qualities of the natives-Tattowing and painting-Dress-Head-dresses-Ear- and nose-ornaments-Houses-Food-Cannibalism amongst men-Freedom from disease-Canoes-Carving-Tools-Cloth fabrics-Nets-TillageWeapons-Spontoons-War and other songs-Human trophies-Heppahs -Chiefs-Religion-Burial-Language.

As we intend to leave this place to-morrow, I shall spend a few sheets in drawing together what I have observed of the country and of its inhabitants, premising that in this, and in all other descriptions of the same kind which may occur in this journal, I shall give myself liberty to conjecture, and draw conclusions from what I have observed. In these I may doubtless be mistaken; in the daily Journal, however, the observations may be seen, and any one who refers to that may draw his own conclusions from them, attending as little as he pleases to any of mine.

This country was first discovered by Abel Jansen Tasman on the 13th of December 1642, and called by him New Zealand. He, however, never went ashore on it, probably from fear of the natives, who, when he had come to an anchor, set upon one of his boats and killed three or four out of the seven people in her.

Tasman certainly was an able navigator; he sailed into the mouth of Cook's Straits, and finding himself surrounded, to all appearance, by land, observed the flood tide to come from

the south-east; from thence he conjectured that there was in that place a passage through the land, which conjecture we proved to be true, as he himself had certainly done, had not the wind changed as he thought in his favour, giving him an opportunity of returning the way he came in, which he preferred to standing into a bay with an on-shore wind, upon the strength of conjecture only. Again, when he came the length of Cape Maria Van Diemen he observed hollow waves to come from the north-east, from whence he concluded it to be the northernmost part of the land, which we really found it to be. Lastly, to his eternal credit be it spoken, although he had been four months absent from Batavia when he made this land, and had sailed both west and east, his longitude (allowing for an error in that of Batavia, as he has himself stated it) differs no more than 1 from ours, which is corrected by an innumerable number of observations of the moon and sun, etc., as well as of a transit of Mercury over the sun, all calculated and observed by Mr. Green, a mathematician of well-known abilities, who was sent out in this ship by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus. Thus much for Tasman; it were too much to be wished, however, that we had a fuller account of his voyage than that published by Dirk Rembrantz, which seems to be no more than a short extract, and that other navigators would imitate him in mentioning the supposed latitudes and longitudes of the places from whence they take their departures; which precaution, useful as it is, may almost be said to have been used by Tasman alone.

The face of the country is in general mountainous, especially inland, where probably runs a chain of very high hills, parts of which we saw at several times. They were generally covered with snow, and certainly very high; some of our officers, men of experience, did not scruple to say as

1 Left blank in Banks's Journal. The following note was appended by Banks at the end of the chapter :

Though Tasman's longitude of Cape Maria Van Diemen comes near the truth, our seamen affirm, and seem to make it appear, that he erred no less than 4° 49′ in running from the first land he made to Cape Maria Van Diemen ; if so, his exactness must be attributed more to chance than skill.

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much as the Peak of Teneriffe: in that particular, however, I cannot quite agree with them, though that they must be very high is proved by the hill to the northward of Cook's Straits, which was seen, and made no inconsiderable figure, at the distance of many leagues.

The sea coast, should it ever be examined, will probably be found to abound in good harbours. We saw several, of which the Bay of Islands, or Motuaro, and Queen Charlotte's Sound, or Totarra-nue, are as good as any which seamen need desire to come into, either for good anchorage or for convenience of wooding and watering. The outer ridge of land which is open to the sea is (as I believe is the case of most countries) generally barren, especially to the southward, but within that the hills are covered with thick woods quite to the top, and every valley produces a rivulet of water.

The soil is in general light, and consequently admirably adapted to the uses for which the natives cultivate it, their crops consisting entirely of roots. On the southern and western sides it is the most barren, the sea being generally bounded either by steep hills or vast tracts of sand, which is probably the reason why the people in these parts were so much less numerous, and lived almost entirely upon fish. The northern and eastern shores make, however, some amends for the barrenness of the others; on them we often saw very large tracts of ground, which either actually were, or very lately had been, cultivated, and immense areas of woodland which were yet uncleared, but promised great returns to the people who would take the trouble of clearing them. Taoneroa, or Poverty Bay, and Tolago especially, besides swamps which might doubtless easily be drained, sufficiently evinced the richness of their soil by the great size of all the plants that grew upon them, and more especially of the timber trees, which were the straightest, cleanest, and I may say the largest I have ever seen, at least speaking of them in the gross. I may have seen several times single trees larger than any I observed among these; but it was not one, but all these trees, which were enormous, and doubtless had we had time and opportunity to search, we might have

found larger ones than any we saw, as we were never but once ashore among them, and that only for a short time on the banks of the river Thames, where we rowed for many miles between woods of these trees, to which we could see no bounds. The river Thames is indeed, in every respect, the most proper place we have yet seen for establishing a colony. A ship as large as ours might be carried several miles up the river, where she could be moored to the trees as safely as alongside a wharf in London river, a safe and sure retreat in case of an attack from the natives. Or she might even be laid on the mud and a bridge built to her. The noble timber of which there is such abundance would furnish plenty of materials for building either defences, houses, or vessels; the river would furnish plenty of fish, and the soil make ample returns for any European vegetables, etc., sown in it.

I have some reason to think from observations made upon the vegetables that the winters here are extremely mild, much more so than in England; the summers we have found to be scarcely at all hotter, though more equally warm.

I

The southern part, which is much more hilly and barren than the northern, I firmly believe to abound with minerals in a very high degree: this, however, is only conjecture. had not to my great regret an opportunity of landing in any place where the signs of them were promising, except the last; nor indeed in any one, where from the ship the country appeared likely to produce them, which it did to the southward in a very high degree, as I have mentioned in my daily Journal.

On every occasion when we landed in this country, we have seen, I had almost said, no quadrupeds originally natives of it. Dogs and rats, indeed, there are, the former

1 A commencement of colonisation was made by Samuel Marsden, a missionary, in 1814, in the Bay of Islands. The first definite attempt to colonise was by the New Zealand Company in 1840, whose settlement was at Wellington. In the same year Captain Hobson, R. N., was sent as Lieut.Governor he landed in the Bay of Islands, and transferred his headquarters to the Hauraki Gulf in September, where he founded Auckland (Wharton's Cook, p. 231).

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QUADRUPEDS, BIRDS, ETC.

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as in other countries companions of the men, and the latter probably brought hither by the men; especially as they are so scarce, that I myself have not had opportunity of seeing even one. Of seals, indeed, we have seen a few, and one sea-lion; but these were in the sea, and are certainly very scarce, as there were no signs of them among the natives, except a few teeth of the latter, which they make into a kind of bodkin and value much. It appears not improbable that there really are no other species of quadrupeds in the country, for the natives, whose chief luxury in dress consists in the skins and hair of dogs and the skins of divers birds, and who wear for ornaments the bones and beaks of birds and teeth of dogs, would probably have made use of some part of any other animal they were acquainted with, a circumstance which, though carefully sought after, we never saw the least signs of.

Of birds there are not many species, and none, except perhaps the gannet, are the same as those of Europe. There are ducks and shags of several kinds, sufficiently like the European ones to be called the same by the seamen, both which we eat and accounted good food, especially the former, which are not at all inferior to those of Europe.

Besides these there are hawks, owls, and quails, differing but little at first sight from those of Europe, and several small birds that sing much more melodiously than any I have heard. The sea coast is also frequently visited by many oceanic birds, as albatrosses, shearwaters, pintados, etc., and has also a few of the birds called by Sir John Narbrough penguins, which are truly what the French call a nuance between birds and fishes, as their feathers, especially on their wings, differ but little from scales; and their wings themselves, which they use only in diving, by no means attempting to fly or even accelerate their motion on the surface of the water (as young birds are observed to do), might thence almost as properly be called fins.

Neither are insects in greater plenty than birds; a few butterflies and beetles, flesh-flies very like those in Europe, mosquitos and sand-flies, perhaps exactly the same as those