4 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



plain. 1. Cook first visited them at the very period of their planting season; 

 or, rather, when he anchored in Tolaga Bay, it was just over, as he himself 

 states ; so that of their cultivated vegetable roots they could not possihly spare 

 any — that particular time being with them always one of scarcity of crop- 

 vegetable food, from the fact of their one principal cultivated root (the pro- 

 duce of seed from the previous autumnal season) not keeping sound beyond 

 the regular period of setting it in the earth. Moreover, tAvo things must 

 here be steadily borne in mind : — (1) their cultivations were always strictly 

 tabooed, and therefore could not be intruded on ; and (2) every chief had 

 several plantations, and always far apart from each other, for prudent poli- 

 tical reasons. Notwithstanding this, Cook says that he saw, at Tolaga Bay 

 alone, " from 150 to 200 acres under crop," and that, too, in a place with a 

 small population ; for, he adds, " we never saw there 100 people."* 2. At 

 all of Cook's visits (with the one exception of his touching, on his first 

 voyage, at Tolaga Bay, and his subsequent call in at the Bay of Islands) he 

 anchored and staid in places where the Maoris did not have any cultiva- 

 tions ; indeed, it is doubtful whether the Maoris of the Southern Island ever 

 had any. Hence, when they visited his ships in their canoes, and often 

 from a distance, they had little or nothing in the shape of vegetable food 

 with them save fern-root, and Avere therefore supposed to be in great need 

 of victuals, and not unfrequeiitly experienced the generosity of their visitors, 

 AA^iich (as we ourselves have subsequently too often found) encouraged them 

 to adopt and persist in a habit of systematic begging. 3. And this, too, has 

 been often the case with them in their subsequent intercourse with shipping 

 and Avith visitors, and also in the early years of the Colony, — the Maoris 

 in visiting or coming among the Whites have been without food, just be- 

 cause they Avere aAA^ay from their homes and cultivations ; much, indeed, as 

 it is Avith om*selves in travelling, etc., in a new or unsettled country. 4. 

 There still, however, remains the fact that modern writers on the Maoris 

 (as Manning and Taylor f ) Avho have resided a long time in Ncaa' Zealand, 

 state the same ; all I can say is, that they are altogether Avrong in their 

 conclusions ; they, not having witnessed it themselves in the past, suppose 



* Cook's Voyages, 1st Voyage, Vol. II., p. 313. 

 t Here is a specimen : — " Formerly they were much pinched for food in winter ; that 

 period went by the name of the gnimhling months, they had no other name for them, 

 being a blank in their calendar, as they could do nothing but sit in their smoky huts 

 with eyes always filled with tears." [What horrid stuff !] Again : — " In times of 

 scarcity, the only food they had to depend upon was fern-root and shell-fish. The travel- 

 ler is often surprised, as he journeys along the coast, by the large heaps of shells which 

 he sees on almost every mound he passes ; these are records of by-gone scarcity, (fec."-^ 

 Taylor's New Zealand, 2nd Ed., p. 3il 



