412 Essays. 
from the Government, for lands sold, some tens of thousands of pounds in 
gold; while the greatly increased value of their own reserves within and 
near such alienated blocks, and the enormous consequent value of the large 
tracts still in their hands, is almost beyond computation. The industrial 
stimulus they have received through the steady influx of settlers, the forma- 
tion of towns for all their supplies, and the largely increasing demands for 
pigs, grain, potatoes, kauri-resin, and tanning barks, are also very great. A 
New Zealander of low rank, or even a slave, of the present day, is possessed 
of far more real wealth and comforts than a chief was twenty years ago, or 
than a whole tribe possessed thirty years back; and all exotic—through 
their inereased intercourse with Europeans. Unfortunately, however, this 
period, like all the others, is marked by the shedding of their blood by their 
European friends, the present unfinished war being the third within the 
last twenty years, and in each case brought on and begun by themselves. 
2. Domestic or Internal. 
59. From the time of their discovery by Cook (1769) to the end of that 
eentury.—It is evident that Cook found them much as Tasman left them,— 
ready to shed blood, and delighting in doing it. Tasman, their discoverer, 
lost a boat’s crew of six men through their sudden murderous attack. Cook 
on several occasions was attacked by them,—sometimes, too, at sea, by their 
throwing stones at his ship! and smashing his cabin windows, which we can 
now well afford to laugh at; and Furneaux (Cook’s consort on his third 
voyage) lost, as we have seen, a whole boat’s crew of ^ ten of the best men 
of the ship,” by the natives of Queen Charlotte Sound, who, besides killing, 
ate them. These were the same tribe, or their neighbours, as those who had 
killed Tasman’s crew. Their treacherous attack the year before on Marion 
and his crew in the Bay of Islands, in which they killed the commander and 
twenty-eight of his men, showed clearly their character towards Europeans, 
who were their benefactors, while the full information obtained from Cook 
as clearly showed their character towards each other. The first few natives 
whom he took on board his ship by force at Poverty Bay (after killing four 
of their companions) begged hard not to be landed by him at a place in the 
Bay only a few miles from whence their canoe had come, lest they should be 
killed by their own neighbours ! Speaking of them generally, he also says, 
“If I had followed the advice of all our pretended friends, I might have 
extirpated the whole race ; for the people of each hamlet or village, by turns, 
applied to meto destroy theother." Such being their known fierce character, 
. discovery and other ships generally avoided them, and they were left to their 
|. old practice of destroying one another; until towards the end of the eight- 
,  ,eenth century, when, owing to the colonization of New South Wales, they 
