SM ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XI. 
feeling. The old chiefs have become accustomed to be 
bribed and flattered into good-humour in the early 
days when the whalers were not numerous enough to 
defend themselves, and also in the summer when they 
are dispersed about. In consequence, these chiefs have 
acquired an overbearing, grasping, and bullying demean- 
our ; which, though laughed at by the whalers when 
assembled, falls with redoubled force on new-comers 
unused to deal with them, or on scattered settlers. 
They never fail to try it on every European with whom 
they meet. In some revolting instances, (but these, I 
will say, are exceptions,) the natives have been incited 
and assisted in hostility towards the colonists by some 
of the whalers. I believe that the whalers, as a class, 
would be the first to brand such wretches with infamy, 
if fully convicted of the crime. 
The whalers had thus, before our arrival, braved the 
first dangers of the intercourse between the savage and 
the civilized man ; — they had explored the coast and 
seaboard country, and had introduced new wants as 
well as new vices, and a considerable degree of respect 
for the physical qualities of the pakeka among the abo- 
riginal population. With the exception of the expedi- 
tion made by Marsden in 1814, 1 believe that in every 
instance these rough pioneers had smoothed the way for 
a more valuable civilization ; and that the missionaries, 
or the settlers, followed on their traces. I mention 
this with no wish to detract from the credit due to that 
system which first proposed to seek the benefit of the 
natives alone, and to obtain a deserved moral influence 
over them ; but I state as a curious fact, that, whether 
as whalers and sealers in the south, or sawyers and flax 
or provision traders in the north, the first rough and 
unconscious pioneers of civilization were those who 
experienced the greatest hardships ; and that they 
