26 chapters
10 hour read
Selected Chapters
26 chapters
Preface
Preface
I believe that there is amongst the people of the Mother Country a minority, now ceasing to be small, which takes a quickening interest in the Colonies. It no longer consists merely of would-be investors, or emigrants who want to inquire into the resources, industries, and finances of one or other of the self-governing parts of the Empire. Many of its members never expect to see a colony. But they have come to recognise that those new-comers into the circle of civilized communities, the daughter
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Note of Acknowledgment
Note of Acknowledgment
I have to thank Major-General Robley, not only for drawing the tail-piece to the second chapter, and thereby giving the book a minute but correct pattern of the Maori moko or face-tattooing, but for kindly lending me photographs and drawings from which several other illustrations have been taken. Two or three of the tail-pieces are after designs in Mr. Hamilton's Maori Art . I have also to thank Mr. A. Martin of Wanganui for his kind permission to use his fine photograph of Mount Egmont and a vi
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter I THE LONG WHITE CLOUD[1]
Chapter I THE LONG WHITE CLOUD[1]
[Footnote 1: Ao-Tea-Roa, the Maori name of New Zealand.] Though one of the parts of the earth best fitted for man, New Zealand was probably about the last of such lands occupied by the human race. The first European to find it was a Dutch sea-captain who was looking for something else, and who thought it a part of South America, from which it is sundered by five thousand miles of ocean. It takes its name from a province of Holland to which it does not bear the remotest likeness, and is usually r
43 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter II THE MAORI
Chapter II THE MAORI
"The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on. Nor all your piety or wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it." The first colonists of New Zealand were brown men from the South Seas. It was from Eastern Polynesia that the Maoris unquestionably came. They are of the same race as the courteous, handsome people who inhabit the South Sea Islands from Hawaii to Rarotonga, and who, in Fiji, mingle their blood with the darker and inferior Melanesians
36 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter III THE MAORI AND THE UNSEEN
Chapter III THE MAORI AND THE UNSEEN
"Dreaming caves Full of the groping of bewildered waves." The Maori mind conceived of the Universe as divided into three regions—the Heavens above, the Earth beneath, and the Darkness under the Earth. To Rangi, the Heaven, the privileged souls of chiefs and priests returned after death, for from Rangi had come down their ancestors the gods, the fathers of the heroes. For the souls of the common people there was in prospect no such lofty and serene abode. They could not hope to climb after death
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter IV THE NAVIGATORS
Chapter IV THE NAVIGATORS
"A ship is floating on the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow. There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel hath ever ploughed that path before." Nearly at the end of 1642, Tasman, a sea captain in the service of the Dutch East India Company, sighted the western ranges of the Southern Alps. He was four months out from Java, investigating the extent of New Holland, and in particular its possible continuation southward as a great Antarctic continent. He had just discover
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter V NO MAN'S LAND
Chapter V NO MAN'S LAND
"The wild justice of revenge." The Maoris told Cook that, years before the Endeavour first entered Poverty Bay, a ship had visited the northern side of Cook's Strait and stayed there some time, and that a half-caste son of the captain was still living. In one of his later voyages, the navigator was informed that a European vessel had lately been wrecked near the same part of the country, and that the crew, who reached the shore, had all been clubbed after a desperate resistance. It is likely eno
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VI MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT
Chapter VI MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT
"Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy."— Text of Samuel Marsden's first sermon at the Bay of Islands, Christmas Day , 1814. Maoris, shipping before the mast on board whalers and traders, made some of the best seamen on the Pacific. They visited Sydney and other civilized ports, where their fine physique, bold bearing, and strangely tattooed faces, heightened the interest felt in them as specimens of their ferocious and dreaded race. Stories of the Maoris went far and wide—of their fierce
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VII THE MUSKETS OF HONGI
Chapter VII THE MUSKETS OF HONGI
"He sang of battles, and the breath Of stormy war and violent death." Marsden's notes help us to picture his first night in New Zealand. The son of the Yorkshire blacksmith, the voyager in convict-ships, the chaplain of New South Wales in the days of rum and chain-gangs, was not the man to be troubled by nerves. But even Marsden was wakeful on that night. Thinking of many things—thoughts not to be expressed—the missionary paced up and down on the sea beach by which a tribe was encamped. The air
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter VIII "A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS"
Chapter VIII "A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS"
"Under his office treason was no crime; The sons of Belial had a glorious time." Dryden . Between 1830 and 1840, then, New Zealand had drifted into a new phase of existence. Instead of being an unknown land, peopled by ferocious cannibals, to whose shores ship-captains gave as wide a berth as possible, she was now a country with a white element and a constant trade. Missionaries were labouring, not only along the coasts, but in many districts of the interior, and, as the decade neared its end, a
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter IX THE DREAMS OF GIBBON WAKEFIELD
Chapter IX THE DREAMS OF GIBBON WAKEFIELD
Twin are the gates of sleep: through that of Horn, Swift shadows winged, the shapes of truth are borne. Fair wrought the Ivory gate gleams white anigh, But false the dreams dark gods despatch thereby. The founder of the Colony now comes on the scene. It was time he came. The Islands were neither to fall into the hands of the French nor remain the happy hunting-ground of promiscuous adventurers. But the fate which ordained that Edward Gibbon Wakefield should save them from these alternatives inte
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter X IN THE CAUDINE FORKS
Chapter X IN THE CAUDINE FORKS
I would rather be governed by Nero on the spot than by a Board of Angels in London.— John Robert Godley . Though Governor Hobson landed in January, the formal annexation of the Colony did not take place until May. He had first to take possession; and this could only be effectually done with the consent of the native tribes. The northern chiefs were therefore summoned, and came to meet the Queen's representative at Waitangi (Water of Weeping). Tents and a platform were erected, and the question o
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XI THROUGH WEAKNESS INTO WAR
Chapter XI THROUGH WEAKNESS INTO WAR
"Awhile he makes some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves, And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck." In 1842 it took eight months before an official, when writing from New Zealand to England, could hope to get an answer. The time was far distant when the results of a cricket match in the southern hemisphere could be proclaimed in the stree
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XII GOOD GOVERNOR GREY
Chapter XII GOOD GOVERNOR GREY
"No hasty fool of stubborn will, But prudent, wary, pliant still, Who, since his work was good, Would do it as he could." Captain Grey came in the nick of time. That he managed because he wasted no time about coming. The despatch, removing him from South Australia to New Zealand, reached Adelaide on the 15th of October, 1845, and by the 14th of November he was in Auckland. He arrived to find Kororáreka in ashes, Auckland anxious, the Company's settlers in the south harassed by the Maoris and emb
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIII THE PASTORAL PROVINCES
Chapter XIII THE PASTORAL PROVINCES
"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full Out of their choicest and their whitest wool." The Company's settlements were no longer confined to the shores of Cook's Straits. In 1846, Earl Grey, formerly Lord Howick, came to the Colonial Office, and set himself to compensate the Company for former official hostility. He secured for it a loan of £250,000, and handed over to it large blocks of land in the South Island, which—less certain reserves—was in process of complete purchase from its ha
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIV LEARNING TO WALK
Chapter XIV LEARNING TO WALK
The Constitution under which the colonists were granted the management of their own affairs was partly based on Grey's suggestions, though it was drafted in England by Mr. Adderley under Gibbon Wakefield's supervision. Its quality may be judged from its duration. It worked almost without alteration for twenty-two years, and in the main well. Thereafter it was much cut about and altered. Briefly described, it provided the Colony with a dual system of self-government under a Viceroy appointed by t
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XV GOVERNOR BROWNE'S BAD BARGAIN
Chapter XV GOVERNOR BROWNE'S BAD BARGAIN
"In defence of the colonists of New Zealand, of whom I am one, I say most distinctly and solemnly that I have never known a single act of wilful injustice or oppression committed by any one in authority against a New Zealander." — Bishop Selwyn (1862). Colonel Gore Browne took the reins from Colonel Wynyard. The one was just such an honourable and personally estimable soldier as the other. But though he did not involve his Parliament in ridicule, Governor Browne did much more serious mischief.
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVI TUPARA[1] AGAINST ENFIELD
Chapter XVI TUPARA[1] AGAINST ENFIELD
"The hills like giants at a hunting lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay." [Footnote 1: Tupara (two-barrel), the Maori name for the short double-barrelled guns which were their handiest weapons against us in bush warfare.] In 1860 the Taranaki settlement was growing to be what it now is—a very pleasant corner of the earth. Curving round the seashore under the lofty, lonely, symmetrical cone of Egmont, it is a green land of soft air and many streams. After long delays and much hope deferre
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVII THE FIRE IN THE FERN
Chapter XVII THE FIRE IN THE FERN
"But War, of its majestic mask laid bare, The face of naked Murder seemed to wear." From the middle of 1864, to January, 1865, there was so little fighting that it might have been thought that the war was nearing its end. The Waikato had been cleared, and the Tauranga tribes crushed. Thompson, hopeless of further struggling ceased to resist the irresistible, made his peace with us and during the short remainder of his life was treated as became an honourable foe. Nevertheless, nearly two years o
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XVIII GOLD-DIGGERS AND GUM-DIGGERS
Chapter XVIII GOLD-DIGGERS AND GUM-DIGGERS
"Fortune, they say, flies from us: she but wheels Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff, Lost in the mist one moment, and the next Brushing the white sail with a whiter wing As if to court the aim. Experience watches, And has her on the turn." When the Waitara war broke out the white population did not number more than seventy-five thousand. When Te Kooti was chased into the King Country it had grown to nearly four times that sum, in the face of debt, doubt, and the paralyzing effects
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XIX THE PROVINCES AND THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY
Chapter XIX THE PROVINCES AND THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY
"Members the Treasurer pressing to mob; Provinces urging the annual job; Districts whose motto is cash or commotion; Counties with thirsts which would drink up an ocean; These be the horse-leech's children which cry, 'Wanted, Expenditure!' I must supply." — The Premier's Puzzle . Sir George Grey had been curtly recalled in the early part of 1868. His friends may fairly claim that at the time of his departure the Colony was at peace, and that he left it bearing with him the general esteem of the
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XX IN PARLIAMENT
Chapter XX IN PARLIAMENT
"Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small That stood upon the floor or by the wall, And some loquacious Vessels were, and some Listened, perhaps, but never talked at all." When we come to look at the men as distinct from the measures of the parliament of New Zealand between 1870 and 1890, perhaps the most interesting and curious feature was the Continuous Ministry. With some approach to accuracy it may be said to have come into office in August, 1869, and to have finally expired in January
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XXI SOME BONES OF CONTENTION
Chapter XXI SOME BONES OF CONTENTION
"Now who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten who in ears and eyes Match me; we all surmise, They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?" During the ten years beginning in 1879 New Zealand finance was little more than a series of attempts to avert deficits. In their endeavours to raise the revenue required for interest payments on the still swelling public debt, and the inevitably growing departmental expenditure, various treasure
22 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XXII EIGHT YEARS OF EXPERIMENT
Chapter XXII EIGHT YEARS OF EXPERIMENT
"For I remember stopping by the way To watch a potter thumping his wet clay." In 1890 a new force came into the political field—organized labour. The growth of the cities and of factories in them, the decline of the alluvial and more easily worked gold-fields, and the occupation of the more fertile and accessible lands, all gradually tended to reproduce in the new country old-world industrial conditions. Even the sweating system could be found at work in holes and corners. There need be no surpr
43 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
Chapter XXIII THE NEW ZEALANDERS
Chapter XXIII THE NEW ZEALANDERS
"No hungry generations tread thee down." Some 785,000 whites, browns, and yellows are now living in New Zealand. Of these the browns are made up of about 37,000 Maoris and 5,800 half-castes. The Maoris seem slowly decreasing, the half-castes increasing rather rapidly. 315,000 sheep, 30,000 cattle, many horses, and much land, a little of which they cultivate, some of which they let, support them comfortably enough. The yellows, some 3,500 Chinese, are a true alien element. They do not marry—78 Eu
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about New Zealand are numerous enough. A critic need not be fastidious to regret that most of them are not better written, useful and interesting as they are in the mass. Every sort of information about the country is to be got from them, but not always with pleasure or ease. To get it you must do a good deal of the curst hard reading which comes from easy writing. And even then, for the most part, it is left to your own imaginative power to see— "The beauty, and the wonder, and the power,
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter