412 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



For the first fifteen years of New Zealand's contact with a 

 civilising race the controlling influences were industry and 

 religion. It was not the English language or literature that 

 operated to regulate and influence the actions and habits of 

 the natives. As already pointed out, it took twenty years for 

 the issue of 3,800 books to the natives in their own language, 

 and at the same time hardly a step had been taken to in- 

 struct the Maoris in the English language. The influence of 

 the religious teachers had been great in the way of modifying 

 the instincts of a savage race that had lived long in isolation 

 and had been untouched by external agencies. Intercourse is 

 the mother of change in all conditions of being, and the isola- 

 tion of the natives when brought into contact with what 

 represented the highest form of the religious side of civilisa- 

 tion was slow to imitate, though it regarded with respect, the 

 men who " preached and practised " — a new thing to the 

 people. The real influence of the religious teacher consisted 

 in his skill and his ability to supply the higher comforts and 

 conveniences of life, and the provision that was made for 

 the betterment of the social condition of the people was the 

 secret and source of the influence exercised by the teachers 

 of religion. The new contact of the natives with sailors and 

 others of like aspirations broke the spell of religious seclusion 

 in the country. 



The ten years between 1830 and 1840 may be termed the 

 " second period" in the process of change through which the 

 natives went before coming under the direct control of Eng- 

 land. The books issued to the natives between 1830 and 

 1834 may be set down as the first fruits of the new period ; 

 but, though the aim was to foster the religious life, they acted 

 in the direction of creating a desire for other books, and that 

 desire was not long in being met. But it could not be met by 

 the isolation of language that was preached and hoped for by 

 the teachers of the day. The natives were not taught the 

 English language, but those of them who were brought in 

 contact with the rabble that often gathered together from the 

 ships at Kororareka and other places in the Bay of Islands 

 soon acquired the power of expressing themselves in the not 

 too elegant English of the sailors, ex-convicts, and others who 

 delighted to throw difficulties in the way of those men and 

 women who strove to raise the natives to purer aims and hopes. 

 It was the meeting at the "cross-ways" in the thirties, where 

 we can trace the growth among the natives themselves of 

 wider ambitions and wider views than was possible so long as 

 they followed the course laid down for them by their first 

 teachers. 



Things in the Bay of Islands flourished in a widely differ- 

 ent way to what had been expected by those who, fixing 



