THE NAVIGATORS
"A ship is floating on the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow.
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel hath ever ploughed that path before."
Nearly at the end of 1642, Tasman, a sea captain in the service of the
Dutch East India Company, sighted the western ranges of the Southern
Alps. He was four months out from Java, investigating the extent of
New Holland, and in particular its possible continuation southward as
a great Antarctic continent. He had just discovered Tasmania, and was
destined, ere returning home, to light upon Fiji and the Friendly
Islands. So true is it that the most striking discoveries are made by
men who are searching for what they never find. In clear weather the
coast of Westland is a grand spectacle, and even through the dry,
matter-of-fact entries of Tasman's log we can see that it impressed
him. He notes that the mountains seemed lifted aloft in the air. With
his two ships, the small _Heemskirk_ and tiny _Zeehan_, he began to
coast cautiously northward, looking for an opening eastward, and
noting the high, cloud-clapped, double range of mountains, and the
emptiness of the steep desolate coast, where neither smoke nor men,
ships nor boats, were to be seen. He could not guess that hidden in
this wilderness was a wealth of coal and gold as valuable as the
riches of Java. He seems to have regarded New Zealand simply as a
lofty barrier across his path, to be passed at the first chance.
Groping along, he actually turned into the wide opening which,
narrowing further east into Cook's Strait, divides the North and South
Islands. He anchored in Golden Bay; but luck was against him. First of
all the natives of the bay paddled out to view his ships, and, falling
on a boat's crew, clubbed four out of seven of the men. Tasman's
account--which I take leave to doubt--makes the attack senselessly
wanton and unprovoked.
He tells how a fleet of canoes, each carrying from thirteen to
seventeen men, hung about his vessels, and how the strongly-built,
gruff-voiced natives, with yellowish-brown skins, and with white
feathers stuck in their clubbed hair, refused all offers of
intercourse. Their attack on his boat as it was being pulled from the
_Zeehan_ to the _Heemskirk_ was furious and sudden, and the crew
seem to have been either unarmed or too panic-stricken to use their
weapons. Both ships at once opened a hot fire on the canoes, but hit
nobody. It was not until next day, when twenty-two canoes put out to
attack them, that the Dutch marksmen after much more firing succeeded
in hitting a native. On his fall the canoes retired. Satisfied with
this Tasman took no vengeance and sailed away further into the strait.
Fierce north-westerly gales checked for days his northward progress.
The strait, it may be mentioned, is still playfully termed "the
windpipe of the Pacific." One night Tasman held a council on board the
_Heemskirk_, and suggested to the officers that the tide showed that
an opening must exist to the east, for which they had better search.
But he did not persevere. When next evening the north wind died away
there came an easterly breeze, followed by a stiff southerly gale,
which made him change his mind again. So are discoveries missed.
He ran on northward, merely catching glimpses, through scud and cloud,
of the North Island. Finally, at what is now North Cape, he discerned
to his joy a free passage to the east. He made one attempt to land, in
search of water, on a little group of islands hard by, which, as it
was Epiphany, he called Three Kings, after Caspar, Melchior, and
Balthasar. But the surf was rough and a throng of natives, striding
along, shaking spears and shouting with hoarse voices, terrified his
boat's crew. He gave up the attempt and sailed away, glad, no doubt,
to leave this vague realm of storm and savages. It says something
for his judgment that amid such surroundings he saw and noted in his
log-book that the country was good. He had called it Staaten Land, on
the wild guess that it extended to the island of that name off the
coast of Terra del Fuego. Afterwards he altered the name to New
Zealand. The secretive commercial policy of the Dutch authorities
made them shroud Tasman's discoveries in mystery. It is said that his
discoveries were engraved on the map of the world which in 1648 was
cut on the stone floor of the Amsterdam Town Hall. The full text of
his log has only been quite recently published. His curt entries
dealing with the appearance of the New Zealand coast and its natives
seem usually truthful enough. The tribe which attacked his boat was
afterwards nearly exterminated by invaders from the North Island.
This would account for the almost utter absence among the Maoris of
tradition concerning his visit. It is noteworthy that he describes
the natives of Golden--or, as he named it, Murderers'--Bay as having
double-canoes. When the country was annexed, two hundred years
afterwards, the New Zealanders had forgotten how to build them.
The Dutch made no use of their Australian discoveries. They were
repelled by the heat, the drought, and the barrenness of the
north-western coasts of New Holland. For a century and a quarter after
Tasman's flying visit, New Zealand remained virtually unknown. Then
the veil was lifted once and for all. Captain James Cook, in the
_Endeavour_, sighted New Zealand in 1769. He had the time to study the
country, and the ability too. On his first voyage alone nearly six
months were devoted to it. In five visits he surveyed the coast,
described the aspect and products of the islands, and noted down a
mass of invaluable details concerning the native tribes. Every one may
not be able to perceive the literary charm which certain eulogists
have been privileged to find in Cook's admirable record of interesting
facts. But he may well seem great enough as a discoverer and observer,
to be easily able to survive a worse style--say Hawkesworth's. He
found New Zealand a line on the map, and left it an Archipelago, a
feat which many generations of her colonists will value above the
shaping of sentences. The feature of his experiences which most
strikes the reader now, is the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of
the natives. They took the _Endeavour_ for a gigantic white-winged
sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors
gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. Yet,
when Cook and a boat's crew landed, a defiant war-chief at once
threatened the boat, and persisted until he was shot dead. Almost all
Cook's attempts to trade and converse with the Maoris ended in the
same way--a scuffle and a musket-shot. Yet the savages were never
cowed, and came again. They were shot for the smallest thefts. Once
Cook fired on the crew of a canoe merely for refusing to stop and
answer questions about their habits and customs, and killed four of
them--an act of which he calmly notes that he himself could not, on
reflection, approve. On the other hand he insisted on discipline, and
flogged his sailors for robbing native plantations. For that age he
was singularly humane, and so prudent that he did not lose a man on
his first and most troubled visit to New Zealand. During this voyage
he killed ten Maoris. Later intercourse was much more peaceful, though
Captain Furneaux, of Cook's consort, the _Adventure_, less lucky, or
less cautious, lost an entire boat's crew, killed and eaten.
Cook himself was always able to get wood and water for his ships, and
to carry on his surveys with such accuracy and deliberation that they
remained the standard authority on the outlines of the islands for
some seventy years. He took possession of the country in the name of
George the Third. Some of its coast-names still recall incidents of
his patient voyaging. "Young Nick's Head" is the point which the boy
Nicholas Young sighted on the 6th of October, 1769--the first bit of
New Zealand seen by English eyes. At Cape Runaway the Maoris, after
threatening an attack, ran away from a discharge of firearms. At Cape
Kidnappers they tried to carry off Cook's Tahitian boy in one of
their canoes. A volley, which killed a Maori, made them let go their
captive, who dived into the sea and swam back to the _Endeavour_ half
crazed with excitement at his narrow escape from a New Zealand oven.
The odd name of the very fertile district of Poverty Bay reminds us
that Cook failed to get there the supplies he obtained at the Bay of
Plenty. At Goose Cove he turned five geese ashore; at Mercury Bay he
did astronomical work. On the other hand, Capes North, South, East,
and West, and Capes Brett, Saunders, Stephens, and Jackson, Rock's
Point, and Black Head are neither quaint nor romantic names. Cascade
Point and the Bay of Islands justify themselves, and Banks' Peninsula
may be accepted for Sir Joseph's sake. But it could be wished that
the great sailor had spared a certain charming haven from the name of
Hicks's Bay, and had not rechristened the majestic cone of Taranaki as
a compliment to the Earl of Egmont.
He gave the natives seed potatoes and the seeds of cabbages and
turnips. The potatoes were cultivated with care and success. One tribe
had sufficient self-control not to eat any for three years; then they
had abundance. Gradually the potato superseded amongst them the taro
and fern-root, and even to some extent the kumara. The cabbages and
turnips were allowed to run wild, and in that state were still found
flourishing fifty years afterwards. The Maoris of Poverty Bay had a
story that Cook gave to one of their chiefs a musket with a supply of
powder and lead. The fate of the musket was that the first man to fire
it was so frightened by the report and recoil that he flung it away
into the sea. The powder the natives sowed in the ground believing it
to be cabbage seed. Of the lead they made an axe, and when the axe
bent at the first blow they put it in the fire to harden it. When it
then ran about like water they tried to guide it out of the fire with
sticks. But it broke in pieces, and they gave up the attempt. With
better results Cook turned fowls and pigs loose to furnish the
islanders with flesh-meat. To this day the wild pigs which the
settlers shoot and spear in the forests and mountain valleys, are
called after Captain Cook, and furnish many a solitary shepherd and
farmer with a much more wholesome meal than they would get from "tame"
pork. The Maoris who boarded Cook's ships thought at first that pork
was whale's flesh. They said the salt meat nipped their throats,
which need not surprise us when we remember what the salt junk of
an eighteenth century man-of-war was like. They ate ship's biscuit
greedily, though at first sight they took it for an uncanny kind of
pumice-stone. But in those days they turned with loathing from wine
and spirits--as least Crozet says so.
What Captain Cook thought of the Maori is a common-place of New
Zealand literature. Every maker of books gives a version of his notes.
What the Maori thought of Captain Cook is not so widely known. Yet it
is just as interesting, and happily the picture of the great navigator
as he appeared to the savages has been preserved for us. Among the
tribe living at Mercury Bay when the _Endeavour_ put in there was a
boy--a little fellow of about eight years old, but possessing the
name of Horeta Taniwha (Red-smeared Dragon)--no less. The child lived
through all the changes and chances of Maori life and warfare to more
than ninety years of age. In his extreme old age he would still tell
of how he saw Kapene Kuku--Captain Cook. Once he told his story to
Governor Wynyard, who had it promptly taken down. Another version is
also printed in one of Mr. John White's volumes.[1] The two do not
differ in any important particular. The amazing apparition of the huge
white-winged ship with its crew of goblins, and what they said, and
what they did, and how they looked, had remained clearly photographed
upon the retina of Taniwha's mind's-eye for three-quarters of a
century. From his youth up he had, of course, proudly repeated the
story. A more delightful child's narrative it would be hard to find.
[Footnote 1: _Ancient History of the Maori_, vol. v., p. 128.]
The people at Mercury Bay knew at once, says Taniwha, that the English
were goblins, because a boat's crew pulled ashore, rowing with their
backs to the land. Only goblins have eyes in the backs of their heads.
When these creatures stepped on to the beach all the natives retreated
and the children ran into the bush. But seeing that the wondrous
beings walked peaceably about picking up stones and grasses and
finally eating oysters, they said to each other, "Perhaps these
goblins are not like our Maori goblins," and, taking courage, offered
them sweet potatoes, and even lit a fire and roasted cockles for them.
When one of the strangers pointed a walking-staff he had in his hand
at a cormorant sitting on a dead tree, and there was a flash of
lightning and a clap of thunder, followed by the cormorant's fall
there was another stampede into the bush. But the goblins laughed so
good-humouredly that the children took heart to return and look at the
fallen bird. Yes, it was dead; but what had killed it? and still the
wonder grew!
The _Endeavour_ lay in the bay for some time, and a brisk trade grew
up between ship and shore. On one great, never-to-be-forgotten day
little Taniwha and some of his play-fellows were taken out in a canoe
and went on board the magic ship. Wrapped in their flax cloaks they
sat close together on the deck, not daring to move about for fear they
might be bewitched in some dark corner, and so might never be able
to go away and get home again. But their sharp brown eyes noted
everything. They easily made out the leader of the goblins. He was a
_tino tangata_ (a very man--emphatically a man). Grave and dignified,
he walked about saying few words, while the other goblins chatted
freely. Presently the goblin-captain came up to the boys and, after
patting their heads and stroking their cloaks, produced a large nail
and held it up before them temptingly. The other youngsters sat
motionless, awe-struck. But the bolder Taniwha laughed cheerfully and
was at once presented with the prize. The children forthwith agreed
amongst themselves that Cook was not only a _tino tangata_, but
a _tino rangatira_--a combination of a great chief and a perfect
gentleman. How otherwise could he be so kind to them, and so fond of
children, argued these youthful sages?
Then they saw the captain draw black marks on the quarter-deck and
make a speech to the natives, pointing towards the coast. "The goblins
want to know the shape of the country," said a quick-witted old chief,
and, rising up, he drew with charcoal a map of The Fish of Maui, from
the Glittering Lake at the extreme south to Land's End in the far
north. Then, seeing that the goblins did not understand that the
Land's End was the spot from which the spirits of the dead slid down
to the shades below, the old chief laid himself down stiffly on the
deck and closed his eyes. But still the goblins did not comprehend;
they only looked at each other and spoke in their hard, hissing
speech. After this little Taniwha went on shore, bearing with him his
precious nail. He kept it for years, using it in turns as a spear-head
and an auger, or carrying it slung round his neck as a sacred
charm.[1] But one day, when out in a canoe, he was capsized in the
breakers off a certain islet and, to use his own words, "my god was
lost to me, though I dived for it."
[Footnote 1: _Heitiki_.]
Taniwha describes how a thief was shot by Lieutenant Gore for stealing
a piece of calico. The thief offered to sell a dog-skin cloak, but
when the calico was handed down over the bulwarks into his canoe which
was alongside the _Endeavour_, he simply took it, gave nothing in
return, and told his comrades to paddle to land.
"They paddled away. The goblin went down into the hold of
the ship, but soon came up with a walking-stick in his hand, and
pointed it at the canoe. Thunder pealed and lightning flashed,
but those in the canoe paddled on. Then they landed; eight rose
to leave the canoe, but the thief sat still with his dog-skin mat and
the goblin's garment under his feet. His companions called him,
but he did not answer. One of them shook him and the thief fell
back into the hold of the canoe, and blood was seen on his clothing
and a hole in his back."
What followed was a capital example of the Maori doctrine of _utu_,
or compensation, the cause of so many wars and vendettas. The tribe
decided that as the thief had stolen the calico, his death ought not
to be avenged, but that as he had paid for it with his life _he_
should keep it. So it was buried with him.
The French were but a few months behind the English in the discovery
of New Zealand. The ship of their captain, De Surville, just
missed meeting Cook at the Bay of Islands. There the French made a
fortnight's stay, and were well treated by the chief, Kinui, who acted
with particular kindness to certain sick sailors put on shore to
recover. Unfortunately one of De Surville's boats was stolen, and in
return he not only burnt the nearest village and a number of canoes,
but kidnapped the innocent Kinui, who pined away on shipboard and died
off the South American coast a few days before De Surville himself was
drowned in the surf in trying to land at Callao.
For this rough-handed and unjust act certain of De Surville's
countrymen were destined to pay dearly. Between two and three years
afterwards, two French exploring vessels under the command of Marion
du Fresne entered the Bay of Islands. They were in want of masts and
spars, of wood and water, and had many men down with sickness.
The expedition was on the look-out for that dream of so many
geographers--the great south continent. Marion was a tried seaman, a
man of wealth and education, and of an adventurous spirit. It is to
Crozet, one of his officers, that we owe the story of his fate. Thanks
probably to the Abbé Rochon, who edited Crozet's papers, the narrative
is clear, pithy, and business-like: an agreeable contrast to the
Hawkesworth-Cook-Banks motley, so much more familiar to most of us.
For nearly five weeks after Marion's ships anchored in the bay all
went merry as a marriage bell, though the relations of the French tars
with the Maori _wahiné_ were not in the strict sense matrimonial. The
Maoris, at first cautious, soon became the best of friends with the
sailors, conveying shooting parties about the country, supplying
the ships with fish, and showing themselves expert traders, keenly
appreciative of the value of the smallest scrap of iron, to say
nothing of tools. Through all their friendly intercourse, however,
it was ominous that they breathed no word of Cook or De Surville.
Moreover, a day came on which one of them stole Marion's sword. Crozet
goes out of his way to describe how the kindly captain refused to put
the thief in irons, though the man's own chief asked that it should be
done. But it leaks out--from the statement of another officer--that
the thief was put in irons. We may believe that he was flogged also.
[Illustration: STERN OF CANOE]
Crozet marked the physical strength of the Maori, and was particularly
struck with the lightness of the complexions of some, and the European
cast of their features. One young man and a young girl were as white
as the French themselves. Others were nearly black, with frizzled
hair, and showed, he thought, Papuan blood. To the Frenchman's eye the
women seemed coarse and clumsy beside the men. He was acute enough to
notice that the whole population seemed to be found by the sea-shore;
though he often looked from high hill-tops he saw no villages in the
interior. Children seemed few in number, the cultivations small, and
the whole race plainly lived in an incessant state of war. He admired
the skilful construction of the stockades, the cleanliness of the
_pas_, the orderly magazines of food and fishing gear, and the
armouries where the weapons of stone and wood were ranged in precise
order. He praises the canoes and carving--save the hideous attempts
at copying the human form. In short he gives one of the most valuable
pictures of Maori life in its entirely primitive stage.
A camp on shore was established for the invalids and another for the
party engaged in cutting down the tall kauri pines for masts. Crozet
calls the kauri trees cedars, and is full of praises of their size and
quality. He was the officer in charge of the woodcutters. On the 13th
June he saw marching towards his camp a detachment from the ship fully
armed and with the sun flashing on their fixed bayonets. At once it
occurred to him that something must be amiss--otherwise why fixed
bayonets? Going forward, Crozet bade the detachment halt, and quietly
asked what was the matter. The news was indeed grave. On the day
before M. Marion with a party of officers and men, seventeen strong,
had gone on shore and had not been seen since. No anxiety was felt
about them until morning; the French had often spent the night at
one or other of the _pas_. But in the morning a terrible thing had
happened. A long-boat had been sent ashore at 7 a.m. for wood and
water. Two hours later a solitary sailor with two spear-wounds in his
side swam back to his ship. Though badly hurt he was able to tell
his story. The Maoris on the beach had welcomed the boat's crew as
usual--even carrying them pick-a-back through the surf. No sooner were
they ashore and separated than each was surrounded and speared or
tomahawked. Eleven were thus killed and savagely hacked to pieces. The
sole survivor had fought his way into the scrub and escaped unnoticed.
Crozet promptly dismantled his station, burying and burning all that
could not be carried away, and marched his men to the boats. The
natives met them on the way, yelling, dancing, and shouting that their
chief had killed Marion. Arrived at the boats, Crozet says that he
drew a line along the sand and called to a chief that any native who
crossed it would be shot. The chief, he declares, quietly told the
mob, who at once, to the number of a thousand, sat down on the ground
and watched the French embark. No sooner had the boats pushed out than
the natives in an access of fury began to hurl javelins and stones
and rushed after them into the water. Pausing within easy range, the
French opened fire with deadly effect and continued to kill till
Crozet, wearying of the slaughter, told the oarsmen to pull on. He
asks us to believe that the Maoris did not understand the effect of
musketry, and yet stood obstinately to be butchered, crying out and
wondering over the bodies of their fallen.
The French next set to work to bring off their sick shipmates from
their camp. Strange to say they had not been attacked, though the
natives had been prowling round them.
Thereafter a village on an islet close by the ship's anchorage was
stormed with much slaughter of the inhabitants. Fifty were slain and
the bodies buried with one hand sticking out of the ground to show
that the French did not eat enemies. Next the ship's guns were tried
on canoes in the bay. One was cut in two by a round shot and several
of her paddle-men killed.
A day or two later the officers recovered sufficient confidence to
send a party to attack the village where their captain had presumably
been murdered. The Maoris fled. But Marion's boat-cloak was seen
on the shoulders of their chief, and in the huts were found more
clothing--blood-stained--and fragments of human flesh.
The ships were hurriedly got ready for sea. The beautiful "cedar"
masts were abandoned, and jury-masts set up instead. Wood and water
were taken in, and the expedition sailed for Manila, turning its back
upon the quest of the great southern continent. Meanwhile the Maoris
had taken refuge in the hills, whence the cries of their sentinels
could be heard by day and their signal fires be descried by night.
Crozet moralizes on the malignant and unprovoked treachery of these
savages. He pours out his contempt on the Parisian _philosophes_ who
idealized primitive man and natural virtue. For his part he would
rather meet a lion or a tiger, for then he would know what to do! But
there is another side to the story. The memory of the _Wi-Wi_,[1] "the
bloody tribe of Marion," lingered long in the Bay of Islands. Fifty
years after Captain Cruise was told by the Maoris how Marion had
been killed for burning their villages. Thirty years later still,
Surgeon-Major Thomson heard natives relating round a fire how the
French had broken into their _tapu_ sanctuaries and put their chiefs
in irons. And then there were the deeds of De Surville. Apart from
certain odd features in Crozet's narrative, it may be remarked that he
errs in making the Maoris act quite causelessly. The Maori code was
strange and fantastic, but a tribal vendetta always had a reason.
[Footnote 1: _Out-Out_.]
Thus did the Dutch, English, and French in succession discover New
Zealand, and forthwith come into conflict with its dauntless and
ferocious natives. The skill and moderation of Cook may be judged by
comparing his success with the episodes of De Surville's roughness and
the troubles which befel Tasman, Furneaux, and Marion du Fresne. Or we
may please ourselves by contrasting English persistency and harsh
but not unjust dealing, with Dutch over-cautiousness and French
carelessness and cruelty. One after the other the Navigators revealed
the islands to the world, and began at the same time that series
of deeds of blood and reprisal which made the name of New Zealand
notorious for generations, and only ended with the massacre of Poverty
Bay a long century afterwards.
[Illustration]