tea axd silk faeming in new zealand, 179 



New Zealand, China, India, and Ceylon. 



New Zealand is situated in the Southern Hemisphere, and 

 consists of the North, South, and Stewart's Islands, with several 

 small dependencies ; the group lying between 34° and 48° S. 

 lat, and 166° and 179° E. long. ; measuring about one thousand 

 one hundred miles in total length, with a varying breadth of from 

 forty-six to two hundred and fifty miles, yet with no portion of its 

 territory more than seventy-five miles from the sea. In extent the 

 entire colony covers an area of about sixty-four million acres, so 

 that it is somewhat smaller than Great Britain and Ireland. The 

 islands w^ere discovered in 1642 by Tasman, a Dutch navigator, 

 who, after naming the cluster, merely sailed round without 

 landing, and took no steps to gain possession for his government. 

 From this date until 1769 there exists no reliable record of any 

 stranger having visited these shores ; but on the 8th October of 

 the latter year the illustrious Captain Cook landed in Poverty 

 Bay, on the east side of the North Island. Other voyagers in 

 rapid sequence succeeded Captain Cook, who commenced, and 

 for some years maintained, a tolerably friendly, although some- 

 what irregular, intercourse with tlie natives. Whaling and 

 other ships got into the habit of calling, and sometimes a few of 

 the Maories would return temporarily wdth their crews to Sydney 

 and other Australian ports, in order to gratify their curiosity 

 regarding the exciting accounts they had heard of the magnifi- 

 cence and power of the Pakehas, as they called our countrymen. 

 This custom, both innocent and laudable in itself, led, unfor- 

 tunately, in 1809, to a deplorable tragedy, w^hich may be regarded 

 as the beginning of that protracted period of mutual bloodshed 

 and reprisals ^vhich endured, with only limited periods of tran- 

 quillity, for nearly sixty years. The trading ship " Boyd," from 

 Sydney, with seventy persons on board, including four New Zea- 

 landers and the son of a chief, returning to their own country, 

 anchored off Wangaroa to allow the Maories to land, and with 

 the object of enabling the crew to cut some spars. The young 

 chief landed alone, and succeeded in arousing the revengeful 

 passions of his tribe, who were in the vicinity, by describing 

 a flogging he had received on board for declining, on account 

 of his rank, to assist in working the ship during tlie voyage. 

 Returning to the vessel in a short time with some of his friends, 

 they, with smiles and apparent amity, invited the Captain and 

 part of the crew to land and point out what trees would suit. 

 No sooner had they entered the forest, than tlie whole of the 

 Europeans were, at a preconcerted signal, massacred. After 

 dark the young savage and his people boarded and plundered 

 the ship, slaughtering all they found except a woman, two 

 children, and a cabin boy wlio had previously shown him some 



