TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 259 



him the love for New Zealand became a passion. He visited 

 it seven times in the daj'S of small schooners and long voyages, 

 his last voyage being performed in 1837, when an old man of 

 seventy-three. His dying lips closed whilst speaking of the 

 country and the people for which he had done so much. For 

 years he desired in true missionary spirit to introduce the 

 gospel to the Natives, but circumstances with which we have 

 now no concern interfered to prevent this, and it was not until 

 1814 that, accompanied by his friend Colonel Nicholas, he was 

 enabled to pay his first visit to New Zealand, and so fulfil his 

 heart's desire. A highly-interesting accouiit of this journey 

 was published by Colonel Nicholas in 1817. His services to 

 the infant colony could ill be spared, and Governor ^lacquarie 

 granted him leave of absence with much unwillingness. How- 

 ever, he was directed to explore as much of the sea-coast and 

 of the interior as his prescribed time would permit. On his 

 return after an absence of four months he addressed an official 

 letter to the Governor, and forwarded a copy of his journal to the 

 Church Missionary Society in London, together with a sketch- 

 map. These are to be found in the " Missionary Eegister " for 

 1816. On this excursion he landed at the North Cape, and 

 between laud and sea travelled southwards down the Btauraki 

 Gulf almost to the mouth of the river Thames — a distance of 

 two hundred miles — penetrating into the interior at various 

 points. But the chief portion of his time was spent exploring 

 the Bay of Islands, where at Eangihu he planted his first 

 missionary-station. He examined the principal rivers debouch- 

 ing into the bay. By the Natives he was received, as always 

 afterwards, with the utmost friendship ; and of their manners 

 and customs, cultivations and fortifications, he gives a valuable 

 account — valuable as the result of an observant, educated man 

 brought into contact with a race in its primitive and unaltered 

 state. 



This was the historic district where six-and-twenty years 

 later British government was first founded, and where by the 

 side of Lake Morberrie, as Marsden calls it — Lake Omapere — 

 was fought the Englishman's first battle with the great chief 

 Hone Heke in 1845. It was stated by the Natives that this 

 lake gave origin to a large river which ran through the interior 

 of the Island and opened into the western ocean, and that upon 

 its waters rode many large canoes, and upon its banks were 

 many settlements and pas. Accordingly upon jNIarsden's map 

 exists a provisional opening for the mouth of this great river, 

 which upon his next visit became known to him as the Shukee- 

 hanga, is known to us as the Hokianga, and was indeed the 

 Chokahanga of twenty years before on Tuki's prijnitive map. 

 Beyond all this nothing whatever was known of the north- 

 west region, which was simply marked "The Desert Coast." 



