412 Essays. 



from the G-overnment, 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 lov/ 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 increased 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 tlte time of tJieir discovery ly Cooh (1769) to the end of that 

 century. — 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 Eurneaux (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 me to destroy the other." 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 



