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2010677277The Discovery of New ZealandJ. C. BeagleholeOxford University PressWellingtonMelbourneLondon1961Source copy consulted: DU410 B365 O 2edJames CookJournals of Captain James Cook: Vol. I, The Voyage of the EndeavourJohn WhiteThe Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions: Tai-Nui. [Vol. V]
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The Discovery of New Zealand
The Discovery of New ZealandJ. C. BeagleholeSecond EditionLondonOxford University PressWellingtonMelbourne1961
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London, E.C.4
Glasgow New York Toronto Melbourne WellingtonBombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala LumpurCape Town Ibadan Nairobi Accra
First edition published by the Department of Internal Affairs,Wellington, New Zealand,1939
Printed in Great Britain By Ebenezer Baylis and Son Ltd.The Trinity Press, Worcester and London
This edition is dedicatedtoGiles
Preface
This is the second edition of an essay, or short book, which first appeared in 1939, as one of the series called 'New Zealand Centennial Surveys'. Its object was to give as clear an account as possible, within a small compass, of the process by which New Zealand was 'discovered'—that is, by which its coastline and its extent became generally known. Its 'exploration'—the discovery of its interior—was the subject of another volume, Mr. W. G. McClymont's Exploration of New Zealand, in the same series.
For this edition the text has been very much revised, and added to a little, where it seemed that brevity had turned into a defect. But I do not think the book is appreciably longer, though I hope it is better. One question caused me much thought, that of Polynesian discovery: in the end I decided to leave the main lines of the first chapter, 'The Maori Voyagers', much as they were, though I have changed its title. This decision may seem outrageous to those who have been swept away by Mr. Andrew Sharp's recent campaign in favour of discovery by 'accidental voyages'. The discussion of Maori, and of Polynesian, origins is a battlefield, littered with gashed theories and not a few dead bodies of speculation; and tradition is obviously open to destructive attack. We cannot ignore the fairy-tale quality. A different sort of treatment of this chapter, however, would inevitably have meant analysis and argument at second hand (for I am not an expert in Polynesian history); and the Maori traditions, whether we believe in a historical 'Fleet' or not, have a value in themselves. They were part of the land that the European navigators discovered—even if the 'Fleet' itself was a European invention. Maori history within New Zealand has recently, it is true, been revolutionized by the archaeologists. Maori scholars have not been quite so enthusiastic about the thesis Mr. Sharp threw among them in 1956, in his Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific, as they have been about carbon-dating; but in discussing the Polynesian discovery of New Zealand it is clear that Mr. Sharp's accidental voyagers, and their Cook islands origin, must be reckoned with.
The proportions of the essay are, I think, about right. One could say much more concerning the visits of Surville and Marion du Fresne, or the activities of sealers and whalers; but it would have to be said rather of their personal relations with the Maori people than of their geographical work, and would tend to obscure the main thread of the narrative. I have given no space at all to the flights of fancy that have arisen from such things as the undocumented dredging up of an alleged 'Spanish morion' in Port Nicholson at an unknown date, or the Tamil bell found by Colenso in the bush in 1836, or traditions of very early wrecks on the coast. These all have their interest, but the interest lies outside my scope.
It would have been beyond the scope, also, of the original essay to tie all quoted passages severely to their sources in a footnote-array. In revising quotations from Cook and Banks, I have gone to the original manuscripts of their journals, a course I was unable to adopt in 1939. All quotations in this section are from Cook, unless specifically attributed to others. Quotations from Tasman are from the translation made for the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs in 1942 by Mr. M. F. Vigeveno, as part of the Tasman tercentennial celebrations of that year. The sources of other extracts will be found sufficiently indicated in the note at the end. In giving the dates for Cook's circumnavigation I have simply converted his 'ship time'—i.e. reckoning the day from noon to noon, not midnight to midnight—to civil time, without allowing for the day he had 'lost' by the time he crossed the 180th meridian. (He himself made the necessary adjustment at Batavia on his homeward passage.) This seems to me now a better practice, and closer to Cook, than the one I adopted in my first edition, of reducing all dates to our own modern equivalent. Any pedantic person who wishes to celebrate a New Zealand anniversary can easily add a day. The problem does not arise in connection with the other voyages discussed.
The Note on the Sources has been simplified, brought up to date, and some dead wood thrown out of it.
J. C. BeagleholeVictoria University of WellingtonOctober 1959
Contents
PagePrefacevii1. The Polynesians12. Abel Janszoon Tasman103. James Cook244. Cook to d'Urville62Appendixes87Note on the Sources95Index99
Illustrations
James CookFrontispiece
From an engraving by J. Basire of the portrait painted by William Hodges, the artist on Cook's second voyage, probably about 1776, and published as frontispiece to the official account of that voyage in 1777. The original painting has disappeared.
Tasman's Chartfacing page 20
This has been reproduced from the facsimile given in the most recent edition (the Linschoten Society's) of the journal of Tasman's voyage, De Reizen van Abel Janszoon Tasman en Franchoys Jacobszoon Visscher ... uitgegeven door R. Posthumus Meyjes (The Hague, 1919). It has here been so placed as to render clear the line of the coast from south to north, though the drawing in the journal, as the lettering indicates, showed the country 'on its side'.
The Endeavour21
A reproduction of a very careful dimensional drawing made by the late Captain F. J. Bayldon, of Sydney, N.S.W., on the basis of all the available information, which is full enough to warrant a great measure of accuracy.
Ship Cove36
From a drawing entitled View in Queen Charlotte's Sound, New Zealand, by John Webber, the artist on Cook's third voyage, and published by him at London in October, 1790. The rather elongated figures are characteristically Webberian.
Cook Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound37
From the chart published in Hawkesworth's Voyages, vol. ii.
Chart of Dusky Bay68
From the engraving by W. Whitchurch, 1776, of the chart made in the Resolution in 1773, and published in Cook's Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World (1777), vol. i.
J. S. C. Dumont D'Urville69
From the engraving of the portrait by A. Maurin which forms the frontispiece of the Atlas to the Voyage de la Corvette l'Astrolabe (Paris, 1833).
Cook's Chart of New Zealandat end
From a photostat of a chart now in the British Museum, B.M. Add. MS 7085.17. It is impossible to reproduce here what seems to be the earliest chart, a very large one, and probably the work of Cook's own hand—B.M. Add. MS 7085.16. This smaller chart is possibly a reduction of the large one, from which the engraving in Hawkesworth, and that published by the Admiralty, were made. On stylistic grounds it looks like Cook's work.
All these illustrations are reproduced from photographs in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
1 The Polynesians
Kupe or Maui: which was it who, first of heroes, came breasting in his canoe the surge of the deep Pacific, riding for many days the dark waves of ocean—Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the great ocean of Kiwa—till on the horizon, beyond the thin veil of spray as it drove before the wind, he saw faintly rising the line of Aotearoa, the Long White Cloud, which men today call New Zealand? Who, as he neared the breaking line of surf and knew once more the smell of friendly earth, first saw the crimson blaze of pohutukawa which Tane the god had set for a signal to voyagers from afar? Who, after refreshment of clear running stream and food of the forest, first coasted that shore, marking beach and headland, rock and river, green plain and the vast front of trees that trod like great chiefs to the sea; and descried inland, rising high into heaven, Hine-tu-maunga, the mountain-ranges with their tresses of water, their pure and shining garb of snow? Skilled seaman he was, we know, familiar with distance and solitude, star and wind, master of sail and paddle, wanderer on greater journeys than blind poet ever sang, inured to peril and meeting it with trained and tautened mind; but who he was we do not know.
For Polynesian history is not, like ours, evidenced by parchment roll, it is not recorded in charter and chronicle and letter-book, in memoir and portrait; it is not built before our eyes in the stable stone of castle and cathedral. It has been carried in legend and genealogy, spoken and heard for a thousand years, and at last written down, with what accuracy we do not know, by men of an alien race. The borderline between god and hero is hard to discern; the interpretation of statement is surrounded by doubt. Was Maui god or hero?—he who dragged up from the boiling depths, with bait of his own blood, that gigantic fish Te Ika a Maui—the sting-ray, our North Island? Was he but the embodiment of Polynesian discovery, which 'fished up' so many islands from the ocean, as the race spread from its original homeland, the first and great Hawaiki; or did a later Maui, as it has been argued, come down from that undetermined homeland Mataora, perhaps twelve hundred years or more ago in his canoe Maahunui, to add first South and then North Island to Maori knowledge? Polynesian scholarship inclines to regard Maui's discovery as myth. Kupe was a discoverer whom, it appears, there is no gainsaying; Kupe may stand with the other great voyagers of history; Kupe for his race is Columbus or Magellan or Cook; for us he is to be deliberately admired like them. Not that among his race he stands alone—great sailor as he was, he was bred from sailors, sailors were his companions and his posterity. His own ancestors had pushed eastward from Indonesia, eastward and south through the centuries, from island-group to island-group, to the Society Islands, to Tahiti and Raiatea, that Hawaiki of the men of New Zealand. Thence they sent forth their greatest expeditions—to Hawaii in the north; through the Tuamotu archipelago to the Marquesas in the north-east and Easter Island in the south-east; to New Zealand in the south-west; and also, if straining hard we are to believe tradition, south into the wastes of the Antarctic Ocean. It may have been about our year 750 that the astonishing Hui-te-Rangiora, in his canoe Te Iwi-o-Atea, sailed from Rarotonga on a voyage of wonders in that direction; he saw the bare white cliffs that towered into the sky from out the monstrous seas, the long and trailing locks of the woman that dwelt therein, which waved about under the waters and on their surface, the frozen sea covered with pia or arrowroot, the deceitful animal that dived to great depths—'a foggy, misty and dark place not shone on by the sun'.
S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki, pp. 175-6. The strain upon us now is harder than it was upon Smith.
Icebergs, the fifty-foot leaves of the bull-kelp, the elephant seal, the snowy ice-fields of a clime very different from Hui-te-Rangiora's own warm islands—all these he had seen; and a century later one Te Aru-tanga-nuku sailed down to see them for himself. If such as these were early Polynesian voyages of curiosity, why should Kupe fear the unknown?
The Polynesian peoples, indeed, in their long migration, had perforce to be voyagers, from island to visible island, or striking out across the open ocean, following the flight of birds, snaring in their sails of matting the favourable trade-wind, or paddling with the united vigour of men to sea-labour born. Thus, while European sailors, with prayers and invocations, plied across the Mediterranean, or crept from headland to headland of their Atlantic coast in galley or cumbrous carrack; long before the Portuguese invented their three-masted ocean-going ship and pushed gradually down the coast of Africa to the Tormented Cape, before Cabot or Columbus, before even the voyages to Labrador of the Vikings of the north—without compass or cross-staff, the Maori had loosed himself against Hine-moana, the forces of ocean, and ridden out the worst of her storms. Prayers and invocations he had, but they were to different gods; and his gods served him well. What served him best was his mastery of his hundred-foot double canoe, or the outrigger canoe which was in some respects better, as it could not split asunder at the height of the storm; and the seamanship which at that period he shared with the masters of Arab dhow and Chinese junk. But they were traders: he was an explorer. Their ocean-ways were known; he ploughed his as he went. The Maori captain in the Maori canoe, at the height of Maori seamanship, before the land claimed him for its own—this was the perfect matching of element and man. Nor was the canoe a negligible factor. The length, possibly, of Cook's Endeavour; strong in its simplicity of hollowed tree-trunk and built-up sides of adzed and closely fitted planks, lashed firm with sennet and shaped to meet the waves; handsome with carved ornament; snug amidst the sprays with its cover of matting drawn tight over stout framework; with forty-foot mast and tough bellying sail; manned by perhaps three score paddlers and guided by the two great steering oars—the ocean-going canoe took men, women and children over many a thousand-mile stretch of sea. The light outrigger, or the twin canoe, gave it stability, the lines gave speed; and more than one eighteenth-century European navigator recorded his admiration for the pace and handling of the Polynesian vessels, late as that period was in island seamanship. Nor did the canoe sail without provision: dried foods, fish and shell-fish, cooked paste of bread-fruit, kumara and yam and taro, coconuts; water stored in containers of gourd, bamboo or seaweed. With such equipment did Kupe sail on the voyage that made Aotearoa known to his people.
Kupe's home, it is likely, was on Raiatea, one of the Society group; but according to legend he was at the island of Raro-tonga when in a dream he saw the supreme god Io, who told him how to find the new land. More probably he was persuaded of its existence and direction from the yearly flight of the kohoperoa, the long-tailed cuckoo, coming always from the southwest to winter in the warm islands of the central Pacific. Kupe left directions for his successors: 'In sailing from Rarotonga to New Zealand, let the course be to the right hand of the setting sun, moon, or Venus, in the month of February'; and that was presumably the month in which he came, about the year 950. His canoe was called Matahorua, and with him came a companion-chief Ngahue—who captained Tawiri-rangi—and his wife and children, and a crew of sixty men. They made a landfall near the North Cape and replenished their stores with birds and fish; thence they sailed down the east coast of the North Island to Palliser Bay in Cook Strait. Here they stopped a while to refit before moving to Port Nicholson, where they encamped somewhere on the Miramar peninsula. The islands in the harbour Kupe named after his daughters Matiu and Makaro. Then he tarried some time at Te Rimurapa or Sinclair Head collecting dried fish, turning afterwards north to Porirua harbour and the island of Mana. From Mana he crossed the strait, to follow down the west coast of the South Island. At Arahura, the chief Ngahue is said to have killed a moa, that giant bird; here also was discovered greenstone, blocks of which were taken home. Round the south of the island went Kupe, through Foveaux Strait, and so northward through Cook Strait again and up the west coast of the North Island. Behind him he left Aropawa, on the southern shore of the strait, and he sailed inside the off-lying isles, whence it is sung,
'I will sing, I will sing of my ancestor Kupe!He it was who severed the land,So that Kapiti, Mana and AropawaWere divided off and stood apart.'
At Porirua Kupe left one of his anchors, named Maungaroa, and after calling at Wanganui and Patea departed finally for Rarotonga and Raiatea again from Hokianga Harbour. To the new country he had discovered he gave the name Aotearoa, a word used by his wife when she first saw the land, lying like a cloud far off on the horizon. Many people wished at once to sail and people it, but to these, when they asked Kupe to lead a new expedition, he answered always, 'E hoki Kupe?'—'Will Kupe return?' He would not; Kupe, we must suppose, had done with roving; but to his people he left this traditional form of words for refusal, and the sailing directions which were handed down by the priests to a generation that might need them. Kupe had secured his fame.
This first explorer, like later ones, spoke well of the high and misty land, which seems—though on this point tradition varies —to have been uninhabited. But whatever the truth of the matter in Kupe's time, when two hundred years later men again sailed of set purpose to New Zealand and remained there, they found many inhabitants. The origin of these is unknown; we have once more tradition, that their ancestors had been driven in three canoes from their home-country, a warm one, by a westerly storm, and that the waves had cast them finally on the shore of Taranaki. Perhaps they were voyaging from island to island in the Pacific when the storm fell on them. They were a dark-skinned people, tall and slim, with flat noses and restless eyes and upstanding hair; lazy, little skilled in the arts of living. From Taranaki, where they settled, they spread to many parts of the North Island, in particular north to Tamaki, and across the island to the Bay of Plenty and Hawke's Bay. These were the tangata-whenua, 'the people of the land', who were found by Toi, when he came from Tahiti about 1150, and who were taken in marriage or fought and slain by the sons of Toi.
Toi was an elder of Tahiti, and one day he sat on the hillside with other elders watching the young men at their canoe-races in the lagoon called Pikopiko-i-whiti. Among the contenders were Toi's grandson, Whatonga, and his friend Tu Rakui. Excited and jubilant, these two sailed their canoe outside the reef to the open sea; a fog came down, the wind blew off the land, and they were lost to all sight. Full of grief, Toi waited long for his grandson to come back; and then manned his owncanoe to search for him. He sailed to Samoa, he sailed to Raro-tonga, in vain; he resolved to sail farther still. And saying to the people of Rarotonga: 'I go to seek my child in strange lands, in the moist land discovered by Kupe, and I will greet the land-head at Aotearoa or be engulfed in the stomach of Hine-moana,' he put to sea. He steered according to the directions of Kupe, but he missed Aotearoa, and the first land he sighted was the Chatham Islands. These could not be Kupe's islands; Toi took thought and put again to sea, ranging westward till he could coast the North Island. No Whatonga did he find, and in despair he settled at Whakatane. Whatonga nevertheless was not lost; he had found safety on another island from which in due time he returned to Tahiti, and now it was for him to go in search of his grandfather. So fitting out Kurahaupo, famous among canoes, and manning it with his strong crew, he sailed also to Rarotonga, and hearing of Toi's words, set out himself across the southern ocean. His landfall was the Tongaporutu river on the west coast; he followed round the North Cape and down the eastern coast, and at Whakatane did Toi and Whatonga, the old man and the young, at last meet again. Whatonga, like Toi, decided to remain. Neither had come intentionally to settle down. Neither had brought roots to cultivate or seeds of edible plants; nor had the people of the land any. Thus it was that Toi to future generations became Toi-kai-rakau, Toi the eater of wood, who roasted fern-root and steamed cabbage tree bole to join to his fish and his fowl. Canoes went back for kumara; the progeny of Toi and Whatonga learnt more of the geography of New Zealand. Other immigrants seem to have come from the eastern Pacific; there was intermarriage and the emergence of mixed tribes. Between these tribes, allied with the unmixed children of Toi, and those who sprang from the earlier inhabitants, quarrels arose and bloodshed, wars that lasted until, it is said, the last of the tangata-whenua fled in seven canoes upon the sea, no more unmerciful than their persecutors, in search of the Chatham Islands. There they lived for many generations, into our modern time.
The Maori in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is clear, was increasingly familiar with the North Island; but little could have been added to Kupe's general knowledge of the outline of the country. It was left to a later immigration to populate more fully, and so to know more fully, its coastline as well as its inward parts. This immigration was that of the group of canoes known as the Fleet, coming from Tahiti about the year 1350, together with three other canoes of great fame, which set out singly. The coming of the Fleet is a principal event in Maori history, and from it is traced, with little exception, all honourable descent. It is important because from that date every ingredient of the Maori population of New Zealand was present, three hundred years before the discovery of the Maori himself by people who, starting as ocean navigators so much later, carried their technical mastery so much farther; it is important because after that date, also, there seems to have been only one voyage back to Hawaiki—and that in the generation in which the Fleet arrived. The greatest voyages of the Polynesians were over—the Maori in the south, like the Hawaiian in the north, who also came from Tahiti, ceased to be familiar with the paths of ocean.
Why was it not till four hundred years after Kupe that Kupe's work was completed by the migration of a great company to the land he had discovered? Principally, it appears, because it was not till then that there was a decisive pressure of population. Hawaiki—Tahiti, Raiatea—was a limited area, highly fertile it is true, but still unable to support an indefinitely increasing number of inhabitants. Food fell short, there was no longer enough bread-fruit; for this, no doubt for other reasons as well, there was bitter fighting and the weaker side preferred emigration to destruction. Kupe's land was known; it was large, there was room for all; and there was a related people there already. There was also the pounamu, the supply of much-desired greenstone. The great canoes were made ready for sea, outriggers strengthened, stores packed on board; and some time in November or December, the months of the fair wind, the Fleet set sail—Tainui, Te Arawa, Mata-atua, Kurahaupo and Tokomaru, with their men, women and children, their chiefs and their priests. So also did the independent canoes, Aotea, Horouta, Takitimu bearing its sacred freight of gods. They steered by the sun and the moon or by Venus, as Kupe had directed, their learned men or tohunga navigating and invoking with chants the favourable gods; and so, with paddles leaping and thrusting in unison, the canoes, in a fortnight or less, would make their landfall. Aotea came to the west coast of the North Island, and its people settled at the Patea river in south Tara-naki. The others arrived on the east coast, the Fleet at or near Whangaparaoa not far from Cape Runaway. From there they dispersed. Mata-atua sailed to the Whakatane river, to people that district and the Bay of Plenty. Arawa ended its voyage at Maketu, whence its people spread inland, some to Rotorua, some to Taupo. Tainui went north, was portaged across the Auckland peninsula to Manukau and sailed down to Kawhia, where two stones now mark its length; its people founded the Waikato and Hauraki tribes. Tokomaru sailed round the north of the island to the Mohakatino river, south of Mokau; its crew peopled north Taranaki. Of Kurahaupo we know nothing certain. Possibly it was wrecked and its people transferred to Aotea, and the legend that it was petrified into a reef on the north-east coast may be a more comforting way of saying this: at any rate its people were scattered from the north down to Lake Horo-whenua. Horouta, like Aotea, seems to have arrived before the Fleet; its people settled part of the east coast and perhaps part of the South Island. Takitimu with its honourable cargo arrived on the east coast about the same time as the Fleet, sailed south from Gisborne dropping settlers on the way, in Wairoa, Hawke's Bay and Wairarapa, at Port Nicholson, and finally Otago, where it was converted into a range of mountains. So came the canoes to their new, and last, homes.
'Drag hither—the canoe!Draw hither—the canoe!To its resting place—the canoe!To its abiding place—the canoe!To the resting place where shall rest—the canoe!'
And their people became an isolated folk, a people of the land, or of coastal voyages, the paddles plunged no more in the far ocean. The carved prows no more followed the great sea-road of Kupe; their owners were wanderers and discoverers no more. They spread over the country, and multiplied, naming valley and hill; and those who had known so well the lagoons, the palms and yellow hibiscus on the beaches of smaller islands, who had fished on the reef at night and feasted on coconut and bread-fruit, were to adapt themselves to a different and harder life—in pattern not unlike the old, but woven with rougher threads. It was a life that owed more to the forest, and to digging of ground with sweat of the brow; a fife more concentrated, more communal, physically protected by the fortress pa, a thing these islanders had not known before. But they remained a brave and poetic people, mindful of their history and of their great forebears; they told tales of the ancient homeland, of Hawaiki. They remained the craftsmen who had built the canoes, and great canoes continued to be built, of swift lines and strong decoration, carved cunningly at prow and stern, for the constant traffic of peace and war. Nevertheless, it was the land, its mountains and waters, that came to be the centre of the tribal being, the land fought for and loved, the land which took on legend and became suffused with all emotion; and it was a land so made part of the lives and minds of men which lay waiting in its green solitude for the sails of far other discoverers.
2 Abel Janszoon Tasman
Not till the seventeenth century, so far as we know, was New Zealand again discovered. Dutch business-men in that century knew what they wanted; and their empire was a business-man's empire. How else than by strict attention to business could the Dutch have won their unassailable position in the East Indies, the position that they acquired with such speed and maintained with such firmness? They had come to the East inevitably, as a major step in their struggle for independence against Spain; and one of the important consequences of the acquisition of Portugal by Spain in 1580 was the loss by Spain of the Portuguese empire in the next three decades. The Dutch were practical men, with, at times, an expansive logic which was of great practical service. To win their independence they had also to win an empire; and their triumph was marked in the East by energy, thoroughness, and a comprehensive lack of scruple. For the trade with the East Indies was one of the foundations of Dutch prosperity, even of continued national existence; it was a trade that, once won, must be jealously preserved. Nor were the Dutch often tempted to outstep their limitations; the seventeen Masters of the United East India Company were not, once their position was assured, prone to indulge in vast schemes of territorial aggrandisement, and their sense of the possible was buttressed by the realization of present profits. Their future was not the gambler's. Occasionally the eloquence of a governor-general might persuade them to sanction some extraordinary expenditure on exploration; but the exploration was not, for them, simply geographical but one of trade. Their speculations must be gilt-edged. In due course such enterprise brought a Dutch captain to New Zealand. This second discovery, that is, was not due to a voyage of 'curiosity', of scientific investigation; it was an incident in commerce. It did not lead to settlement because it did not lead to trade. New Zealand might have been a commercial appendage to the Dutch East Indies; it remained merely a line upon the map.
The seaman whom history has honoured for the discovery was Abel Janszoon Tasman; and Tasman merits all the honour that should fall to a thoroughly skilful commander, performing a considerable task with very inadequate material, and doing it as part of his day's work. As a seaman, in the first half of the seventeenth century he can have had few equals. His competence indeed was of a rare and satisfying sort. But he was not a great man; his character, weighed in a moral balance, was as unsatisfying as that of a large number of his seafaring contemporaries; he could be drunken, brutal and overbearing; and though, to quote from the ample page of Admiral Burney, he was 'both a great and a fortunate discoverer', his mind nevertheless was unvisited by those flashes of geographical insight that have marked the greatest feats of discovery in the Pacific. He was born in 1603 of a poor family in the village of Luytegast in the province of Groningen, and in 1633 shipped to the East Indies before the mast. He became skipper of a yacht, trading and fighting smugglers and natives, and doing odd jobs of charting; and in 1636 he returned to the Netherlands. But two years later he sailed for the East again, and there spent the rest of his life. His most signal service was as second in command of an unsuccessful voyage of 1639 to discover some rumoured islands, rich in gold and silver, east of Japan; he also took part in peaceful trade and commanded a successful kidnapping expedition. He was in fact an East India skipper on general service, and his service deserved well not only of his masters—who were singularly grudging in their acknowledgement—but of geography. The men who planned his voyage deserve as much. They were Anthony van Diemen, the great and ambitious governor-general, and Frans Jacobszoon Visscher, a pilot and hydrographer who wrote on navigation and was, it appears, interested in discovery for its own sake. We know less of Visscher than of Tasman or van Diemen—he was, to the Council at Batavia of the East India Company, 'renowned and highly-experienced'—but we do know that geographically he thought more deeply and with more fertility than either.
Anthony van Diemen was anxious to complete the discovery of Australia—Nova Hollandia—so much of the northern, western and southern coastlines of which Dutch skippers had already mapped in general terms. He would have liked to bring to knowledge again, and to trade with, the Solomon Islands, fit to furnish a king's treasury, which no man had seen since the Spaniard Mendaña in 1568; and he was prepared for even greater schemes. Thus, when Visscher in January 1642 produced a Memoir concerning the Discovery of the Southland, the governor-general read with sympathy.
What was this Southland concerning which Visscher wrote with such persuasiveness? The answer involves the whole conception of the Pacific, and indeed of world-geography, current in Europe before the last quarter of the eighteenth century; and the discovery of New Zealand was but a step in the revision of that view. By the seventeenth century men knew pretty well the outlines of the northern hemisphere, and in the southern hemisphere they knew the extent of Africa and South America. But what lay between Africa and South America? New Holland certainly—but how far did New Holland extend? Did it, beyond the limits of discovered coastline, plunge to the south? Was there a sea passage southward from the Gulf of Carpentaria? Did the land stretch far to the east, or was there another great continent, Terra australis nondum cognita—the Southland not yet known—filling up the undiscovered globe, running north-west from a point near Tierra del Fuego? This last supposition seemed most probable, for the balance of the earth in the cosmos required it; and if so, this immense continent must be a fabulously rich—perhaps even a civilized—one, proffering through the centuries indeed the wealth of a larger trade than the world had ever seen. Spanish expeditions had failed to lay it bare, though the great and tragic Quiros confidently described it, and Drake's voyage in search of it had found treasure more certainly in the Spanish towns of the Peruvian seaboard. But it must exist; it had its name Beach, corrupted from the text of Marco Polo—Beach provincia aurifera, the golden province of Beach. It could hardly fail to attract the man of commerce in his more imaginative moments, and it was a constant challenge to the discoverer. Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire, Dutchmen both, even thought that possibly they had seen it as they passed through the strait of Le Maire in 1616, at the southern extremity of America, and they had called it Staten Landt. We know this now as Staten Island.
Visscher, then, proposed a voyage from Batavia by way of Mauritius, sailing south to 52° or 54°, and then east till land was sighted or till the longitude of eastern New Guinea was reached, when the voyage might be continued north and round that land home. Or one might sail further east in high latitudes to the longitude of the Solomon Islands and then north to discover them; and this might be the best way of going to work, 'since we do not in the least doubt that divers strange things will be revealed to us in the Salomonis Islands'. Or a ship might start from the Netherlands and 'come to a perfect knowledge' of Staten Landt, sailing eastward along its imagined coast, and then continue east; 'in which way one would become acquainted with all the utterly unknown provinces of Beach'. For Beach was said to cover the Atlantic in the far south as well as the Pacific. Or if the Dutch had a station on the coast of Chile they could sail west with the trade-wind to the Solomons, and then south till either western winds or land were encountered, and then east again; 'by which method one will be enabled to discover the southern portion of the world all round the globe, and find out what it consists of—whether land, sea, or icebergs, all that God has ordained there.' These were large ambitions, on which a commercial company might well hesitate to embark; but the governor-general was ready for a modification of them, his masters in the Netherlands were not disinclined for a great voyage, they had in 1642 two ships to spare, and they were not short of men or of supplies.
Van Diemen resolved to send out an expedition; its commander should be Tasman; and Visscher should sail as pilot major and chief adviser. The ships were small—the Heemskerck, a war-yacht, the flagship, and the Zeehaen, a flute, long and narrow for her size, of small draught and a quick sailer.
The two vessels, from Batavia to New Zealand, averaged 125 miles a day.
They were not well-found—at Mauritius the Zeehaen had to be much repaired; but it was the custom of the time to send out ships on the most extraordinary voyages in the casual manner in which one crossed a land-locked harbour. A long voyage was anticipated, indeed; general provisions were carried for twelve months and rice for eighteen. There were to be 'two meat-days and one bacon-day every week, and one mutchkin and a half of arrack every day'. Of 'strong arrack' each of the ships took on board two hogsheads, 'to be in moderation served out in cold weather for the sake of the men's health'. They were also provided with 'divers commodities and minerals' for trade— the contents in fact of a very good general store. Tasman carried a large selection of fabrics, '10 Golconda blankets', '500 Chinese small mirrors', 200 lb. of ironmongery; cloves, mace, nutmegs, pewter; '50 Chinese needles', '10 packets Chinese gold wire', 25 pieces of assorted iron pots, 3 pearls, and '1 large brass basin'. The Zeehaen had a similar cargo. They carried 110 men —the Heemskerck with Yde T'jercxszoon Holman, skipper, sixty; the Zeehaen fifty with skipper Gerrit Jansz. The general conduct of the voyage was, after the Dutch fashion, put in the hands of Tasman and a council of officers, of which he should be chairman; 'in matters relating to navigation, such as the courses to be held and the discoveries of lands to be made, the Pilot-major Francoys Jacobsz will give his vote immediately after the commander, and his advice be duly attended to, the plan of the voyage having been drawn up in conjunction with him'. Visscher, that is, was the scientific leader of the expedition.
General instructions for Tasman and his council were drafted, with vast formality and formidable eloquence, by the Hon. Justus Schouten, Councillor Extraordinary of India. They were issued on 13 August 1642. The 'remaining unknown part of the terrestrial globe' must needs, they laid down, 'comprise well-populated districts in favourable climates and under propitious skies', with rich mines and other treasures; 'so that it may be confidently expected that the expense and trouble that must be bestowed in the eventual discovery of so large a portion of the world will be rewarded with certain fruits of material profit and immortal fame'. Accordingly the ships were to sail first to Mauritius, following Visscher's plan, and then make south to the Southland, or to 52 or 54 degrees if there was no land; then east to the longitude of the 'Salomonis' islands, or if the land was encountered, eastward along its coast, making of such a coast the most exhaustive observations. Alternatively, an attempt might be made to sail up to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but that was a second best. If, in the first case, no land was found, Tasman might with the consent of his council sail as much as eight hundred miles east of the estimated longitude of the Solomons, 'in order to become the better assured of a passage from the Indian Ocean into the South Sea, and to prepare the way for afterwards conveniently finding a short route to Chile'. From that position the course should be north and westward to New Guinea and through the East Indies into the Gulf of Carpentaria, to search for a channel into the South Sea from that neighbourhood. Then at last (it might be May or July 1643) the ships could return to Java. Savages encountered should be treated with caution but with kindness, that thereby all chance of profit might be made known.
'If, unlikely as it may be,' (this was a change in tone from the beginning of the instructions) 'you should happen to come to any country peopled by civilized men, you will give to them greater attention than to wild barbarians, endeavouring to come into contact and parley with its magistrates and subjects, letting them know that you have landed there for the sake of commerce, showing them specimens of the commodities which you have taken on board for the purpose . . . closely observing what things they set store by and are most inclined to; especially trying to find out what commodities their country yields, likewise inquiring after gold and silver, whether the latter are by them held in high esteem; making them believe that you are by no means eager for precious metals, so as to leave them ignorant of the value of the same; and if they should offer you gold or silver in exchange for your articles, you will pretend to hold the same in slight regard, showing them copper, pewter, or lead, and giving them an impression as if the minerals last mentioned were by us set greater value on.' Apart from this legitimate revaluing of the valuable, no injury was to be done to nations discovered. If profitable regions were found, the Company would not be ungrateful to all well-behaved men taking part in the expedition. There was a suitable peroration: 'Concluding these instructions, we cordially wish you the blessing of the Ruler of all things, praying that He may in His mercy endow you with manly courage in the execution of the intended discovery, and may grant you a safe return, to the increase of His glory, the greater reputation of our country, the benefit of the company's service, and your own immortal honour'. An afterthought directed Tasman to take possession of all continents or islands which he should discover, touch at, and set foot on. In this regard his voyage was not highly successful.
But that voyage did make known the existence of New Zealand, and it resulted at least in a name. Tasman sailed from Batavia on 14 August, called at Mauritius, carried out repairs; thence on 8 October made south. By 6 November the ships were in 49° S., but the weather was stormy and intensely cold, and it was resolved on Visscher's advice to go back to 44° and turn east. This course brought them towards the end of the month to Tasmania—Anthony van Diemens Landt—where there were signs of both men and giants, and where a post with a flag on it was planted 'as a memorial to those who shall come after us'. On 4 December Tasman left his anchorage to look for a better watering-place farther north. But the coast fell off to the north-west, the wind was dead against him, and next day the council resolved to sail east again as far as the longitude of the 'Salomonis islands'. For five days the weather varied from calm to squalls, though with the wind generally favourable; two days of good weather followed; then, on 13 December, while Tasman sailed a course east by north, towards noon land was seen—'a large land, uplifted high'—about sixty miles away. Tasman's position he reckoned as latitude 42° 10', longitude 188° 28' east of Teneriffe; the land was the west coast of our South Island between Hokitika and Okarito, or rather the mountains that lay so close to the coast. Tasman changed his course to the south-east and made straight for the land, and a council held in the afternoon decided to touch on it as quickly as possible, for there was a great sea running and the swell, if the weather freshened, might be dangerous. Next day, from eight miles away, the height of the land was very apparent, though thick clouds hid the summits of the mountains. The ships coasted along northwards, so close that the line of surf could be seen breaking on the shore. As evening came on, a low point appeared—Cape Foulwind—towards which they drifted in a calm, till, early next morning, a stream anchor was run out. By noon on the 15th they had weathered the cape, called on Tasman's chart Clyppygen hoeck—Rocky corner—and the land trending north-north-east, sailed due north out from the Karamea Bight. No human beings were seen, no boats, nor even smoke; the country seemed completely desolate. For most of the 16th they drifted in a calm near Cape Farewell; at sunset a south-west breeze sprang up, the land fell away abruptly, and the council was convened to decide what course to follow. They kept close to the coast; and at sunrise next morning smoke at last was seen, about four miles away, blowing off the land. The shore here was of low-lying sand-dunes; at midnight of the 17th they anchored in a calm, outside a sandspit beyond which there was a large open bay. Next morning it was resolved to try to find a harbour and land, and as the ships sailed on, the shallop and cockboat were sent ahead with Visscher and other officers to choose an anchorage. At sunset it fell calm again, and Tasman anchored in fifteen fathoms. A number of lights were seen, and four canoes close inshore; two of these came towards the ships, at which the boats returned on board without landing. The two canoes approaching nearer, the men in them began to call out in a 'rough, loud voice', but in no language known to the Dutch; nor would they come nearer than a stone's throw in answer to Dutch cries, but blew on an instrument which sounded like a Moorish trumpet. In reply a sailor on board the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen's second mate rendered a few tunes on the Dutch trumpet; and this joint concert was kept up till at darkness the visitors departed. The Dutch were cautious; double watches were kept, muskets, pikes and cutlasses were in readiness, and the guns on the top deck were fired and re-loaded.
Next day, 19 December, was one decisive for Tasman's expedition. Early in the morning a canoe with thirteen natives in it paddled out to the ships, again to within a stone's throw. These seventeenth-century Maoris were of ordinary height, strongly-built, in colour 'between brown and yellow', their hair black, tied in a thick tuft on top of the head and stuck with a large white feather. They had a double canoe—'two long narrow praus joined together, over which a number of planks or seating of a kind had been laid, in such a way that above the water one can see underneath the boat. Their paddles were a little over a fathom in length, narrow and pointed at the end.' Some wore mats, others a 'cotton' stuff, most were naked to the waist. They shouted loudly as on the night before, but in spite of signs, and the display of white linen and knives, they refused to come nearer and finally returned to the beach. Meanwhile, the officers of the Zeehaen came on board the Heemskerck to a council, which decided to go as near inshore as possible, since the anchorage was good, and the savages seemed friendly. Shortly after this decision, before anything else had been done, seven canoes moved out from the shore, one of which paddled round behind the Zeehaen while another came quite near to the flagship, the occupants now and then exchanging shouts. A further display of trade goods had no effect. Gerrit Janszoon, the skipper of the Zeehaen, now sent his quartermaster with six men back to his ship, in her cockboat, with orders that if the savages offered to come on board, not too many should be allowed up at once, and that great caution should be used. Tasman's own journal may now speak:
'Just as the cockboat from the Zeehaen put off again, those who were lying in front of us, between the two ships, began to paddle towards it so furiously that when they were about halfway, slightly more on the side of our ship, they struck the Zeehaen's cockboat alongside with their stem, so that it lurched tremendously. Thereupon the foremost one in the villains' boat, with a long blunt pike, thrust the quartermaster Cornelis Joppen in the neck several times, so violently that he could not but fall overboard. Upon this the others attacked with short, thick, wooden clubs (which we at first thought to be heavy blunt parangs
Malay: a kind of heavy chopping-knife. They were the Maori patu-patu.
) and their paddles, overwhelming the cockboat, in which fray three of the Zeehaen's men were left dead and a fourth, owing to the heavy blows, was mortally wounded. The quartermaster and two sailors swam towards our ship and we sent our shallop to meet them, into which they got alive. After this monstrous happening and detestable affair the murderers let the cockboat drift, having taken one of the dead in their canoe and drowned another.' So died Jan Tyssen, far from his native Oue-ven; Tobias Pietersz, of Delft; Jan Isbrantsz; and the fourth man nameless, like other common sailors dead on great voyages.
Muskets and guns were fired from the ships, but to no purpose, the canoes fleeing out of range to the shore; and, allhope abandoned of establishing friendly relations or getting refreshment, the Dutch weighed anchor and set sail. Near the shore were seen twenty-two canoes, of which half, packed with men, were making for the ships: when some were in range a few shots were fired, hitting only one man and rattling about the canoes, which hastened back to shore with paddle and sail. There was no further visit, and the council now determined to sail eastward along the coast in search of water and other refreshment. The bay, which seemed to the sailor so 'beautiful and safe', was called Moordenaers, or Murderers'; a more sensitive generation has changed this name to Golden Bay. The wind forced on the ships a north-easterly course, towards the North Island, so that next morning there was land on all sides. 'This land is the second land reached and discovered by us', wrote Tasman in his journal. 'To this land we have given the name of Staten Landt, in honour of Their High Mightinesses the States-General, since it could be quite possible that this land was connected with Staten Landt,
i.e. the Staten Landt of Schouten and Le Maire.
although this is not certain. This land looks like being a very beautiful land and we trust that this is the mainland coast of the unknown south land. To this course we have given the name of Abel Tasman Passagie since he is the first to have navigated it.'
Now for six days the ships were beset by adverse winds at the entrance to Cook Strait, drifting, tacking backwards and forwards or lying at anchor. 'At first we had thought the land off which we anchored to be an island, not doubting that we should find a passage here to the open South Sea', wrote Tasman, 'but this, to our hearts' regret, turned out totally different.' The 'bay' into which they sailed 'by mistake', and called Zeehaen Bight, showed everywhere 'a beautiful, fine land', though barren near the shore. In the afternoon of the 21st they ran in for shelter under D'Urville Island, where for most of the next four days they were anchored outside Admiralty Bay, in a north-west gale, the weather at its best very dark, hazy, and drizzling. The tops and yards were struck and second anchors let go. In a short calm on the morning of the 24th, the ships' council was held; since the tide was running from the south-east it appeared likely that there might after all be a passage through to the South Sea, which should be investigated as soon as wind and weather would permit, and agreement was thus made; but next day, though tops and yards were again set, the weather was still too gloomy to weigh anchor. Cook Strait is a contrary sort of place, and Tasman's ships were too high-built, with too much overhang at the bow, for easy working against the wind. Under these conditions Christmas was celebrated—Tasman entertained the master and supercargo of the Zeehaen at dinner. 'There were also two pigs killed for the crew,' records a sailor, 'and the commander ordered, besides the ration, a tankard of wine to be given to every mess, as it was the time of the fair.' Two hours before dawn next day, after a calm all the night, a light breeze sprang up from the east-north-east, unfavourable to further eastward exploration, and the ships with no further ado set sail up the coast, to double the land by the north; and now, in spite of all changes of wind, that course was followed, the first two nights being spent lying to under small sail. Generally in sight of land, once or twice out of sight of it, they sailed for another nine days, in weather sometimes very bad, sometimes calm. Cape Egmont, later named Cabo Pieter Boreels after a Batavian councillor, was passed on the 27th, but the mountain was hidden in fog. A high hill, at first taken for an island—probably Mount Karioi—was sighted next day; the land was high in other places also, but elsewhere covered with dunes.
At length when morning broke on 4 January 1643 Tasman found himself near a cape with an island (in reality a small group) to the north-west. There was a strong current from the east and a heavy sea from the north-east, and the land fell away to the eastward; it seemed indeed as if there might be a passage here to the South Sea—and there was, straight to Chile. In the meantime, the council met and decided to land on the island, Drie Coningen, or Three Kings—'because we came to anchor there on Twelfth-night-eve, and sailed thence again on Twelfth-day'—in search of water and vegetables. The afternoon of the 5th was spent by Visscher in the pinnace, with the Zeehaen's cockboat, cautiously reconnoitring the island. They entered a small bay where there was plenty of water coming down from steep hills, but the surf made it impossible to land. Here was also some cultivated land, and two canoes were hauled up, one broken; as the boats pulled round the coast, there were seen on the hill-sides a number of tall men armed with sticks or clubs, who walked with enormous strides, shouted out with loud rough voices and threw stones—a people much like the murderous savages of the south. In the evening the ships anchored a gunshot from the shore. Early next morning the two boats, thoroughly well-armed, went off with the water-casks; but now the combination of heavy current against the wind, surf, and rocks near the shore made the peril for men and casks so great that Visscher and Gerrit Jansz, in command, agreed to return, 'considering that there was still a long voyage ahead and no men or small boats could be spared by the ships'. Tasman concurred; the council was again summoned, and resolution taken to resume the eastward run to 220 degrees of longitude, and then north and west to the Cocos and Hoorn islands—discovered in 1616 by Schouten and Le Maire, but not since visited—for the supplies so much needed. About noon, 6 January, sail was made, at sunset the Dutch were nearly thirty miles to the north-east, and darkness fell once more on the lonely islands in the southern ocean, with their breaking white surf, their mountains, and their passionate rough-voiced men. 'May the Lord God grant us good fortune and a safe voyage,' wrote Tasman's sailor.
But Tasman was not to sail east to 220°. The wind pushed him north-east, to discover the Tongan islands in the last ten days of January, whence, changing course, early in February he discovered also Fiji, and then sailed right round the north of the 'Salomonis Islands' without sighting them, and so to the roadstead at Batavia on 14 June 1643. From the point of view of seamanship his voyage had been an extremely skilful one. He had had long periods of very bad weather, a little good as well as much bad luck: to return with both ships and the loss of only ten men through sickness, added to the four killed in New Zealand, was in itself, for his day, a feat remarkable enough. The officers were granted two months' pay, the seamen one month's, in cash; so it is to be presumed that the Council at Batavia recognized that something worthy of note had been done. But it was far from satisfied. Tasman and Visscher in their journals had given a good many details. 'We have, however,' wrote the Council to the Company at home, 'observed that the said commander has been somewhat remiss in investigating the situation, conformation, and nature of the lands discovered and of the natives inhabiting the same, and as regards the main point [i.e. the discovery of the South Land] has left everything to be more closely inquired into by more industrious successors. . . . Now, that . . . there really is a passage to Chili and Peru, as the discoverers stoutly affirm, we are not prepared to take for granted, since, if they had run a few more degrees to the south they might not unlikely have come upon land again, perhaps even upon the Staten Land (thus named by them) which they had left south of them, and which may possibly extend as far as Le Maire Strait, or may be even many more miles to eastward. All this is mere guesswork, and nothing positive can be laid down respecting unknown matters.' No treasures or matters of profit had been found; the voyage in fact had been disappointing. It was proposed to arrange another expedition over the same course, to Chile, to despoil the Spaniards and 'obtain some good booty in the South Sea'. The fighting in the East Indies against the Portuguese forbade that. Tasman and Visscher coasted the northern seaboard of Australia in 1644; but their East India Company sent out no further great voyages of exploration; such voyages did not pay; gold-mines were best found in the trade of the eastern seas; Terra australis incognita could wait. Tasman returned to general service; had a bout of drinking and fell into disgrace; was restored to honour; became a landholder in Batavia; and there died in 1659, leaving a sum of money to the poor of his native village. Of Visscher after 1644 we know nothing.
New Zealand played but a small part in Tasman's life, as he played but a small part in its history. It was much less pleasing to him than the warm and amiable Tonga. We could wish that he had actually landed in the country and spent there as many weeks as he spent days on its coasts—a bare twenty-three. He certainly learned little of the people, and that little was bad. The reason for the attack is not beyond conjecture, but we can conjecture only. The Maori did not commonly welcome strangers, and these strangers, coming with great vessels in summer, the time of war-parties, might well by him have been reckoned hostile. It was the Ngati Tumatakokiri tribe that afflicted Tasman—a tribe conquered, slaughtered or reduced to slavery in the eighteenth century—and only a remnant survived to the following century to pass on the tradition of that ancient affray. It is difficult also to understand, though it is not unpleasant to record, the forbearance of the Dutch in Murderers' Bay; such an assault by a savage people would normally in the seventeenth century have provoked a massacre in return, and the Dutch were not gentler than others in their handling of native peoples. But it is to be doubted whether the Maoris, even if more peaceable, would have much interested Tasman; they were not civilized, they had no gold, they had nothing to offer the East India Company in trade. Geographically, one may regret that Cook Strait defeated him; yet, while his chart showed a bay, it was not a bay dogmatically. When in doubt, Tasman drew bays. Visscher's chart left an eastern opening. The possibility of a passage there to Chile and the despoiling of the Spaniard was not ruled out. Staten Landt the country certainly was not; Hendrik Brouwer in 1643 proved that the original Staten Landt was an island, and within a very few years the name of Nova zeelandia had been given to this land on the opposite side of the ocean. By whom, we do not know. Why, again we can only conjecture. There was already a Nova Hollandia: would it not be logical, and fair, and allay certain jealousies, to call the later discovery after Holland's rival, the island province fronting on the unquiet waters of the North Sea? Nieuw Zeeland it was to be. A ragged line, Willem Blaeu put it on to the large terrestrial globe he published about 1648; and thereafter, though irregularly, it figured in the more comprehensive atlases that taught geography to Europe. The name is Dutch; the Three Kings is Dutch; Cape Maria van Diemen, that northern point, preserves the memory of Anthony van Diemen's wife less than that of Tasman himself; and it is the Tasman Sea that now beats remorselessly in great billows on the western coast first sighted by European eyes three centuries ago. Tasman is not inadequately remembered. One may remember also Frans Jacobszoon Visscher and other men, who received as crown of their service the sum of two months', or one month's, pay, in cash, and put to sea again.
3 James Cook
We may say this in praise of Cook—the man in the history of oceanic exploration most difficult to overpraise—that he carried out Tasman's instructions. The judgement falls short of adequacy. He did not, it is true, discover the 'Salomonis Islands', he was even disinclined to believe in their existence; but the lands that he did report he reported thoroughly; he sounded, surveyed, charted; he formed amicable relations with almost all the peoples of the Pacific; he showed insight psychological as well as geographical; he sailed to the highest latitude ever reached by sea in the south in one particular longitude; although he found no gold or silver and revealed no rich civilization for European nations to exploit, his search for Terra australis incognita was so complete that after his second voyage it was plain that even the geographer most devoted to theoretical reasoning could no longer believe in its existence. It is in the context of Pacific exploration in general that we must judge Cook's work, and it is in this context that his visits to New Zealand become most significant as part of a life devoted to exploration; but here New Zealand must be the centre of study. For Cook the country was not merely a land discovered and mapped, it was a base, important as a base above all on his astonishing second voyage; for us emphasis must be on the discovery, part of that first voyage which was so striking and signal an achievement, even among the manifold achievements of the eighteenth century. In that voyage was made the first scientific discovery of New Zealand, the land and its native people. At the roots of our islanded history are the navigator, Cook; and the ship, the Endeavour.
Cook was born in 1728; he was still under forty in August 1768, when the Endeavour left Plymouth on her great voyage. He had had thirteen years of naval service and was known as an exceptionally skilled marine surveyor, as well as a good astronomical observer. Now, a newly-commissioned lieutenant, he was to prove himself also a great commander of men and a great discoverer. His primary task was to take a scientific expedition to Tahiti, discovered by Captain Samuel Wallis the previous year, to observe the transit of Venus across the disc of the sun. This was to oblige the Royal Society. The ship was a small one, a bark of 368 tons, 'cat-built', that is, with round bluff bows, wide deep waist and rather flat bottom, and tapering towards the stern; her length was 105 feet, beam 29 feet, and her depth amidships 20 feet; she had a freeboard of something like five feet. She was roomy for her size, and though a slow sailer an excellent sea-boat. She had additional wooden sheathing, studded with nails, was fitted out for a two years' voyage, and she carried ninety-four men. Among them were not merely the astronomical observer, but Mr. Joseph Banks, a young gentleman blessed with the multitudinous gifts of wealth, brains, a sense of adventure, and the scientific spirit. He meant to botanize and to form collections in natural history; he took with him a brother botanist of great distinction, the Swede Dr. Daniel Solander. The flora of New Zealand indeed was to be introduced to science under notable auspices. Tahiti was reached in April 1769, the observations were made at the beginning of June, and after exploration of other islands of the Society group, Cook sailed south on 9 August. He had been joined by Tupaia, an island priest, knowledgeable in navigation, a man of quick intelligence, eager to visit England under the patronage of Banks.
Astronomical observation was not the only object of the voyage. As soon as that part of the work was completed, so Cook's secret instructions directed him, he was to put to sea in search of the great southern continent. Its coast should be encountered between the latitude of Tahiti and 40° south; it was to be explored and the nature of its people examined; if it was uninhabited, it was to be annexed. But even if the continent was not found, there was still work to do. Cook was to make search to the westward, 'between the latitude before mentioned and the latitude of 35° until you discover it or fall in with the Eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman and now called New Zealand. . . . You will, upon falling in with New Zealand, carefully observe the latitude and longitude in which that land is situated, and explore as much of the coast as the condition of the Bark, the health of her crew, and the state of your provisions will admit of, having always great attention to reserve as much of the latter as will enable you to reach some known Port where you may procure a sufficiency to carry you to England' round either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn, as Cook might judge best. Cook bettered his instructions, as was his habit. He sailed down to latitude 40° 22', his ship's company full of hope and his Tahitian hogs suffering from the unaccustomed cold, meeting with seaweed, fog and clouds, gales and hail, but no more than deceptive appearances of land. On 1 September he began to return to the north, and then changed his course west. On 5 October Banks was writing in his journal, 'Our old enemy Cape fly away entertaind us for three hours this morn'; about the same time Cook noted a paler colour in the water, and at 2 p.m. on 6 October 1769 a boy at the masthead, Nicholas Young, sighted land bearing west by north, 'which we stood directly for, and could but just see it of the deck at sun set'. 'All hands seem to agree that this is certainly the Continent we are in search of,' wrote the impulsive Mr. Banks. Next afternoon a bay was visible. 'We saw in the Bay several Canoes, People upon the shore, and some houses in the Country. The land on the Sea-Coast is high, with white steep clifts and back inland are very high mountains, the face of the Country is of a hilly surface and appeares to be cloathed with wood and Verdure.' With these words did Cook record his first sight of New Zealand.
The weather was clear. In the afternoon of the 8th the Endeavour stood into the bay and anchored opposite the entrance of a small river—the Turanganui—and Cook, Banks, and Solander went ashore. They wished for a peaceable meeting with the natives, but the second contact of European and Maori was to be, like the first, fatal. It was the Maori who this time suffered. Cook landed on the eastern side of the river, but seeing some 'Indians' on the other side crossed over in his yawl, leaving the pinnace at the river's entrance. The 'Indians' making off, Cook and his companions walked two or three hundred yards to their huts, leaving the yawl in charge of four boys. Four men immediately emerged from the bush on the eastern side and ran to seize the yawl; the boys, warned by shouts from the pinnace, dropped downstream closely pursued; the pinnace fired muskets over the assailants' heads, and then, just as one of them was about to hurl a spear at the yawl, another musket, which killed him on the spot. For a minute or two the other three stood startled and motionless; then, dragging the body a little way, they made off. Cook, hearing the noise of the muskets, at once returned and went on board the ship. He landed again next morning, the 9th, with his marines, and again faced a body of hostile people across the river. To words called out in the Tahitian tongue they answered only with flourished weapons and a dance of war; but they understood Tupaia perfectly when he spoke, and after some parley first one unarmed man, then twenty or thirty more with their weapons, swam over. All were given presents, but, unsatisfied and truculent, tried to snatch the English weapons, and one of them getting the hanger which Green the astronomer carried, refused to give it up. This action, Tupaia's warnings, and the approach of other Maoris, alarmed Cook, who ordered the man to be fired at; he fell mortally wounded. The others retired to a rock in the middle of the river, but before they retreated altogether came back for the dead man's weapons, in spite of the small shot which wounded three more. Friendly contact seemed impossible; the water in the river was salt; so Cook re-embarked with the intention of rowing round the bay in search of fresh water, 'and if possible to surprise some of the natives and to take them on board and by good treatment and presents endeavour to gain their friendship'. In the afternoon therefore he rowed round the head of the bay, but a heavy surf put landing out of the question. Seeing two canoes coming in from sea he tried to intercept one of them, according to his plan; they fled, and he had a musket discharged over the heads of their occupants, thinking that they would either jump overboard or surrender. Instead, they turned round, seized their weapons and attacked the boat. The English were forced to fire, two or three Maoris were killed and one wounded, while three who did jump overboard, all young, were picked up. It was a bad beginning in a new country, and Cook was unhappy. 'I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things of this nature will cencure my conduct in fireing upon the people in this boat, nor do I my self think that the reason I had for seizing upon her will att all justify me, and had I thought that they would have made the least resistance I would not have come near them, but as they did I was not to stand still and suffer either my self or those that were with me to be knocked on the head.' Banks too was unhappy: 'Thus ended the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen,' he wrote in his journal, 'black be the mark for it and heaven send that such may never return to embitter future reflection.'
In spite of their alarming experience, the three Maori youths were surprisingly cheerful and ate voraciously. The following morning another landing was made at the original place, both to cut wood and to put the prisoners ashore. They were unwilling to leave, saying that they would fall into the hands of their enemies. One man, out of about two hundred who assembled, came across the river to receive presents, and Cook then retired to the ship to avoid any further quarrel. In the afternoon the youths were put ashore again, and walked off with their countrymen; and early next morning, 11 October, the Endeavour stood out of the bay. Cook had had little enough chance to explore the land, and he called the place Poverty Bay,
He was first inclined to call it Endeavour Bay. In the Mitchell Library, Sydney, there are a few sheets of a draft log or journal, in Cook's handwriting, covering 9 October-27 November 1769. In the entry for Wednesday, 11 October, the name Endeavour is scratched out and Poverty inserted. On the other hand, there is no sign of this change of mind in Cook's holograph journal of the voyage—now in the Commonwealth National Library at Canberra—which was written up later.
'because it afforded us no one thing we wanted'; the south-west point he named Young Nick's Head, after the surgeon's boy who first saw the land. The smoke inland argued that the country was well inhabited, and Cook designed to follow the coast south to 40° or 41° and then, if the prospect was not encouraging, to return to the northward.
There was no wind in the afternoon, and while the ship lay becalmed several canoes came off and after some hesitation paddled alongside. Some of the natives had heard of the treatment given the three youths and came on board to trade their paddles for Tahitian cloth—one group even offered to sell their canoe. Three men stayed on the ship till canoes came again the next morning; when these approached only with caution, their occupants were told by the three visitors that the English did not eat men—from which it appeared that the natives might be cannibals. This was off the flat headland which Cook called Cape Table, seven leagues south of Poverty Bay; from here he found the land trended south-south-west. Following the line of the coast, he named the Isle of Portland, 'on account of its very great resemblance to Portland in the English Channell', and hauling round the south end of the island found himself in another bay, a very large one. A number of canoes came off, full of warlike men, but as Cook thought his own boats might have to go ahead sounding—he was for the moment in shoal water—he was forced to dismiss them with a gun fired wide. Two other canoes approached later, but would not come alongside. The land near the shore was moderately high, with white cliffs and sandy beaches; inland it seemed hilly and even mountainous, though well wooded, and 'hath all the appearences of a very pleasent and fertile country'. There were canoes and houses; there was however no harbour or watering-place, and it was this that Cook chiefly wanted. In the morning of 14 October, when the boats were hoisted out to search for fresh water, a number of canoes came out to the ship; they were again very hostile and Cook had again to fire wide; only one canoe out of nine seemed friendly. To avoid trouble he refrained from his search. By noon he was off a similar bay marked by a moderately high bluff and a large lagoon; inland flat wooded country ran up to a chain of mountains patched with snow. Next day, abreast of a point which was at once the south-west limit of this small bay and of the great bay in which the ship had been for three days, the natives proved their hostility once more. Several canoes came out first and sold 'some stinking fish, however it was such as they had, and we were glad to enter into traffick with them upon any terms'. Then a man in another canoe cheated Cook of a piece of red cloth; the canoes all put off but returned in a short time to offer further fish. A Tahitian boy, the servant of Tupaia, was over the side of the Endeavour; he was suddenly snatched into a canoe, which at once made off. The ship opened fire, two or three more natives were killed, and in the confusion the boy leapt into the water and was rescued. From this scene Cook followed the coast once more south-south-west, keeping about a league offshore. The great bay he named Hawke's Bay, after the eminent person who was First Lord of the Admiralty; the cape he called Cape Kidnappers. The bluff he had noticed the day before was Ahuriri Bluff; the lagoon was Port Ahuriri; and the chain of mountains was the Ruahines. The weather remained fine; all down the coast were signs of habitation, with fires visible at night; but Cook could not find what he wanted. 'Seeing no likelyhood of meeting with a harbour', he wrote, 'and the face of the Country Vissibly altering for the worse I thought that the standing farther to the South would not be attended with any Valuable discovery, but would be loosing of time which might be better employ'd and with a greater probability of Success in examining the Coast to the Northward.' It was a sound instinct; a high point of land off which the course was changed was called Cape Turnagain; and in the afternoon of 17 October the Endeavour was sailing north again.
Two days later, between the Isle of Portland and Table Cape, five natives came on board, thoroughly friendly and insistent on remaining all night; and now for some days more Cook found nothing to complain of in the behaviour of the Maoris, who came off to the ship continually. He passed the 'remarkable head' he called Gable End Foreland, and then met with a series of bays, in one of which he anchored. He wanted water, and to see a little of the country, before going further north. This was 'Tegadoo'
Perhaps from te ngaru, the expression for the surf on the shore, not the bay itself.
or Anaura Bay. The natives were grateful for lengths of linen and for Tahitian cloth, but appeared to see no use for iron spikes or nails. It was difficult to get water casks off, because of the surf, but Cook stayed a day to allow Banks to collect among the flowering shrubs which here made the land beautiful; Banks and Solander themselves, seeking passage to the ship with some Maoris, unhandily overturned the canoe in the surf and got a thorough wetting. But they were unharmed, and such amicable relations were encouraging; and though the bay, thought Cook, did not have much to recommend it, there was plenty of 'wild sellery', and he was able to buy a few pounds of sweet potatoes. Next day, told by the Maoris of fresh water in another bay a little to the south, he put in there to 'form some connections' with them, for the wind was contrary. This was 'Tolaga', or Uawa, Bay.
The bay is of course still called Tolaga. The name may be derived from the Maori tauranga, an anchorage, or an abiding place. The corresponding Samoan word (to take another Polynesian tongue) was taulaga. Europeans had great difficulty with the Polynesian indeterminate r and l.
There was plenty of wood and water, wild celery and 'scurvy grass', and a shrub very suitable for making brooms—no doubt manuka; the natives traded fish for cloth and beads and nails; Cook could make exact observations with Green the astronomer to settle the latitude and longitude; he was able to sound the bay, and even to go a little distance into the country. The celery he had boiled every morning with portable soup and oatmeal for his men's breakfast, as he thought it very wholesome and 'a great Antiscorbutick'.
Cook's care in combating scurvy was as marked on this voyage as on his later ones, but was rather overshadowed by the fearful sickness that fell on his men at Batavia, towards the end of the voyage. He lost no opportunity of collecting edible greenstuffs, in which no doubt he was helped materially by Banks and Solander. 'Scurvy grass' was a term applied to more than one plant, but mainly to the cruciferous Lepidium oleraceum, known as long as it lasted as 'Captain Cook's scurvy grass'—the Maori nau. This was once very common on New Zealand coasts, but has been eaten off by sheep and cattle. The wild celery is a genuine celery, Apium prostratum. 'Portable soup', a sort of meat-extract, was made up in thin cakes, and was being hopefully experimented with. Some examples of these cakes still exist in the United Services Museum in Whitehall.
At this bay Cook, able to observe at leisure for the first time, noticed the absence of any animals except dogs—though he was told of rats; the neatness of the native gardens; the multitude of the trees and plants and birds. His own sense of justice is clear in one sentence of his journal. Cloth from Tahiti and Raiatea the Maoris 'Valued more than any thing we could give them and as every one in the Ship were provided with some of this sort of Cloth, I suffer'd every body to purchase what ever they pleased without limitation, for by this means I knew that the natives would not only sell, but get a good price for every thing they brought'. He stayed in the bay five days thus usefully, without any untoward incident, and put to sea again early on 29 October.
The following day he rounded East Cape and the little island which lies off it. Running along shore he was struck by a visible improvement in the fertility of the land. He named Hicks's Bay, 'because Lieutenant Hicks was the first who discover'd it'; Cape Runaway, where a number of canoes, the heavily armed guise of which boded no goodwill, were scared off in a hurry to shore with a round shot fired high; Mount Edgcumbe —possibly after the well-known landmark at Plymouth, possibly after the admiral who was then the Plymouth commander-in-chief—and White Island, from its appearance. Cook had now, at the beginning of November, sailed into the Bay of Plenty, which he named not for the supplies he himself got but for its well cultivated and populated aspect. The plantations were many and regularly laid out, in one place he counted between forty and fifty canoes drawn up on the beach, and fortified villages were numerous and impressive even when seen from out at sea. Tupaia had wrong-headedly insisted that these were 'Mories or places of Worship': Cook himself now began to understand the real nature of the Maori pa. In this bay, too, the first double canoe seen in New Zealand, a large one full of people, came out from Whale Island or Motuhora. The habits of the natives however were not very encouraging. Some who brought lobsters and mussels were inclined to take what they were given and make no return; the people in one canoe even seized linen hanging over the ship's side, which they refused to give up. On this Cook fired a musket or two and finally his useful four-pounders, which sent them off with defiant brandishing of their paddles. Other canoes either began or ended their parleys with a volley of stones. Nor were such bellicose persons the only danger—Cook, on the afternoon of 1 November finding the water shoal rather rapidly, tacked and spent the night in the shelter of 'Mowtohora', to have his wisdom confirmed in the morning, when he discovered rocks ahead of the ship both level with and below the water. As he sailed west the country lost its fertile appearance: 'Continent appeard this morn barren and rocky but many Islands were in sight', noted down Banks on 3 November. One island, under which the ship had again to shelter for a night, Cook called the Mayor; a group further north, most of them merely great rocks, the Court of Aldermen—because of fancied resemblances to the fat and thin among that worshipful London body. There were no plantations to be seen.
Early on the afternoon of the 3rd, three canoes came off from the land, and 'after parading about a little while they darted two pikes at us'. A musket shot dismissed them. These canoes were merely dug out of large trees, without ornament, and their occupants were almost all quite naked. An hour later a large inlet was seen, where Cook determined to anchor. The ship was accompanied inside the entrance by several canoes, which hung about till dark; 'and before they went away they were so generous as to tell us that they would come back and attack us in the morning, but some of them paid us a Visit in the night, thinking no doubt but what they should find all hands asleep, but as soon as they found their mistake they went off.' They came again in the morning full of heavily armed men, but there was no attack; after 'Parading about' the ship for three hours, sometimes trading 'and at other times tricking of us', they dispersed, with a musket ball through one canoe, fired to show them the power of English weapons. Cook took two boats to sound the bay and to fix on a more convenient anchoring place; he refused to be enticed on shore, and in the afternoon anchored the Endeavour a mile inside the south point of the bay, and a mile and a half off a little river, into which the boats could go at low water. His purpose in putting into this bay was to find first a good harbour, and second, a place where he could observe the transit of Mercury, which was due on 9 November, and would enable him to fix the longitude correctly. Mercury Bay he called his harbour before he left; the beautiful half-moon of yellow sand off which he anchored is now known as Cook Bay. Here he was to remain for eleven days, carrying out his observations, recruiting his men on fresh food, getting in wood and water, and paying great attention to the life of the Maoris about the bay. It was the first such pleasant interlude since leaving the Society Islands.
The weather was not invariably good, but the transit was duly observed by Green, assisted by Cook. The ship was heeled and its sides scrubbed. The stream was remarkable for the immense quantity of rock-oysters and other shell-fish found in it, so much so that Cook called it Oyster River (the native name was Purangi). There was plenty of the wild celery that he was so fond of collecting for a green vegetable, and though the ship's boats were not highly successful with their fishing the natives brought for trade a great deal of a sort of large mackerel, 'as good as ever was eat'. Up another river at the head of the bay, which Cook and Banks spent a day exploring, there were not merely shell-fish, but 'pretty plenty of wild Fowl'; and after some months of sea diet Banks found an open-air dinner of broiled shags delicious eating. The Maoris, after their initial hostility, proved very friendly, except for some newcomers who arrived alongside the ship while Cook and his first lieutenant Hicks were on shore with Green on the business of observation. They made no attempt on the ship—probably, Cook thought, having been warned by natives already there—but one man cheated Gore, the second lieutenant, of a piece of cloth, the men in the canoe pushing off and shaking their paddles in their usual gesture of defiance. The incensed Gore fired a musket at the thief and killed him—an act which Cook rather sorrowfully records: 'we had now', he writes, 'been long enough acquainted with these People to know how to chastise trifling faults like this without taking away their lives.' It was the last life sacrificed while the Endeavour was on the coast of New Zealand.
Those natives about the beach off which the ship was anchored seemed a not very prosperous people, without fixed abodes, sleeping under trees and improvised shelters, probably members of a tribe that came to the shore only to fish and take shell-fish, living for the rest on fern-root. Their canoes and other possessions were poorer than those Cook had seen further south. Nor was the country about the bay fertile or cultivated, though on the north side, near its head, there was a pa which Cook examined one day with great interest. Up the river he and Banks had explored—called the River of Mangroves from the number of those trees growing about it—on a cragged peninsula there were the remains of a fort which he had already admired; it had been burnt, probably taken and destroyed by an enemy, so that in both defence and attack the Maori must be a redoubtable warrior. But every point on which there was settled life seemed to be fortified; one small pa clinging to a few yards of rock seemed to the enthusiastic soul of Mr. Banks 'the most beautifuly romantick thing I ever saw'. (The age of sensibility was coming in.) The principal fortress stood abrupt on a high promontory, in some places quite inaccessible, defended by double ditches (one twenty-four feet deep) and rows of picketing, with fighting stages, intercommunicating outworks, and a strong palisade of stakes right round the whole hill-top village—a 'very strong and well choose post and where a small number of resolute men might defend themselves a long time against a vast superior force, Arm'd in the manner as these People are'. Nor was this, though seen so close, at all the most formidable of the fortified places which Cook had seen; they were frequent, as he had already noticed, upon the coast further south. A warlike as well as ingenious people this must be. Yet they seemed to have no bows and arrows; they had spears or lances of more than one sort, the short truncheon or club of wood or bone or stone called the patu-patu, well contrived to knock out brains; they had long barbed darts, and they threw stones; and against the native lance, Cook reckoned, nothing European save the musket might avail. On the beach he saw what he wrongly thought was iron sand, indicating the presence of iron ore not far inland; but iron the Maoris had no idea of using, and preferred the most trifling thing that could be given them to nails or any tool. They had been for the greater part of the ship's stay very friendly, in spite of the unpropitious beginning, and of what Cook deemed their poverty and ignorance; and of the opportunity thus given for observation both Cook and Banks made full use.
They were not the only observers; it was to this visit to Mercury Bay that we owe the clearest Maori account of Cook. There was a small boy called Te Horeta, who more than eighty years afterwards, when white men came to Coromandel in search of gold, told them of that famous event in his youth. The great ship came to Whitianga: what nature of beings could direct it? Perhaps they were goblins. They got into a small boat: 'Yes, it is so; these people are goblins; their eyes are at the back of their heads; they pull on shore with their backs to the land to which they are going.' They pointed a walking-stick at a shag and there was thunder and lightning and the shag fell dead: at that the children were terrified. But they were benevolent goblins, they gave food: a substance like punga-punga or pumice-stone, very hard but sweet; and a fat food, perhaps blubber of whale or flesh of man, but it was salt and nipped the throat. Some light is hereby cast on the nature of ship's biscuit and salt pork. They asked the boys to go with the warriors to see the ship, and though some were afraid, Te Horeta went with two of his friends. The warriors exchanged mats for European goods, and said 'ka pai'—'very good'—and the white men said 'ka pai', and everybody laughed. There was one man, clearly he was the lord of the goblins, of noble appearance, who seldom spoke, but who got a chief to draw a map of the country with charcoal on the deck of the ship; 'he was a very great man, and came to us—the children—and patted our cheeks, and gently touched our heads'. But the boys did not walk about, they were afraid lest they should be bewitched, they sat still and looked; and the man who was so great and noble gave Te Horeta a nail, and Te Horeta said 'ka pai', and they laughed. Te Horeta used it on his spear, and to make holes in the side boards of canoes; he had it for a god but one day his canoe capsized and he lost it, and though he dived he could not find it. This lord gave Te Horeta's people two handfuls of potatoes, and they planted and tended them; they were the first people to have potatoes in this country. And the goblins went away, and Te Horeta, we may believe, was sorry but henceforth distinguished among small boys; and he became a great chief.
Before departing Cook cut upon a tree near his watering-place the ship's name and the date, hoisted the English colours and formally took possession of the place for George III. His departure was delayed for two days by bad weather; but on the morning of 15 November, escorted by a large number of canoes laden with men, women and children, he left the bay and steered north again. On the morning of the 18th he was off Cape Colville (named after the admiral under whom he had served in Newfoundland) and noticed land both south-west and north-west; fear of losing the mainland made him follow the direction of the coast from where he was. Just round the cape there occurred what had become almost a ritual proceeding—two large canoes came out, and hung about the ship some time, until their occupants began to throw stones into it; on which Cook fired a musket-ball through one of the canoes and they both made off. As he sailed next morning down the east side of the gulf in which he now was there were more canoes. Their people had heard of the ship from the other side of the peninsula, they came on board without hesitation, and they departed well pleased with the gifts which they received. Cook, finding the water shoal, anchored about nine miles from the head of the bay, and set out at daylight next morning, the 20th, with Banks, Solander and Tupaia to examine the country from the pinnace and the longboat. They rowed into a river and up it for twelve or fourteen miles; near the entrance they were received at a native village with open arms, and landed again at noon, having decided to go no farther, to examine the great trees which stood on the banks. They were, it appears from Cook's description, kahikatea or white pine; one ran up straight as an arrow eighty-nine feet from ground to branch, and it was not the tallest; it would make the finest plank in the world, judged Banks, rather rashly. (A small tree that was cut down to look at closely must, on the other hand, to judge from a later description given by Banks, have been a matai.) In the afternoon the explorers named the river the Thames ('on account of its bearing some resemblance to that river in England'—for where there were no trees the banks were marshy like those of the Thames, and there was a strong flood tide like that of the English river) and set off on their return past still friendly Maoris; but meeting the flood tide and a strong breeze as they came to the sea they were forced to anchor and did not reach the ship till seven the following morning. That afternoon, 21 November, Cook turned the ship north; the combination of tide, calm, and stormy rainy weather, however, kept him from drawing level with Cape Colville again till the 24th. The ship was frequently at anchor, and he used one interval to land on the western shore, finding there nothing of note. In his absence Lieutenant Hicks had a native flogged for theft: so far was this from displeasing his fellows that he was beaten again by an old man in his canoe.
Bad weather made very doubtful the view of a large part of the western coast, so that Cook could not lay it down with confidence; he knew he was not out of sight of the mainland in general, but whether he passed islands lying before it he did not know. He did indeed do so, and thus had no glimpse of the fine harbour behind them, the Waitemata, where the city of Auckland was in time to rise up. Of the rest of the neighbouring country his impressions were favourable, in spite of bad weather—who indeed could fail to be struck with the noble groves of timber? There was good anchorage; he noticed what we now call Coromandel Harbour; and the natives were as strong and well-made and active as any that had been met. They painted their whole bodies with red ochre and oil, their canoes were large and well built, and once more finely carved. The whole deep firth, as well as the river itself, Cook called the River Thames.
He stood north-west along the coast, inside the fringe of islands, naming the Barrier Isles, Hen and Chickens, and Poor Knights; anchoring in Bream Bay, where upwards of a hundred 'bream'—the excellent tarakihi—were caught, and getting a good view of the country. No natives were seen, but there were fires in the night. Next day, 25 November, several canoes came alongside from villages now visible, and two chiefs who boarded the ship received presents. The persons in the canoes then becoming troublesome, a few shots were fired, 'but as no harm was intended them none they received unless they happend to over heat themselves in pulling a shore'. There were other canoes next morning, and a good many natives on board; their behaviour was 'tollerable friendly', but they would not trade. In the afternoon a remarkable cape was passed, with a high round hillock at its extremity and a mile off it a small high rock pierced right through with a large hole, so that it looked like the arch of a bridge; Cook called it Cape Brett, in honour of Sir Piercey Brett, one of the Lords of the Admiralty—the pierced hole, he fancied, making the name singularly appropriate. They were days of gentle breezes and clear weather, and Cook seems, indeed, to have been in good spirits. West of the cape he came to another deep bay, in which there were a number of islands. Islands and mainland were well inhabited, and a crowd of four or five hundred came off to the ship. These were a handsome people, their black hair combed up and stuck with white feathers, some of them with 'Backsides tattou'd' like their distant relatives in the tropics, though few with marks on the face like those in the south; the chiefs wore their finely woven cloth and dogskin cloaks with an air. Cook passed the bay and got a little north of the Cavalli Islands, so called from the fish he bought there; then, losing ground steadily before a strong westerly wind, he bore away for the bay again and anchored in shallow water south-west of one of the islands, Motu Arohia. This was on 29 November; it was 6 December before he was once more out at sea.
Off the Cavalli Islands the people had flung stones, and in the bay their behaviour was for a while intimidating. A great number assembled as soon as the ship anchored; a few were allowed on board and given some trifles of cloth and nails, but before long their companions tried to carry off the buoy attached to the ship's anchor. Not even the firing of muskets made them desist until one man was hurt by small shot; and then, by way of experiment, a 'great Gun' was fired over their heads. This had some real effect, and they had to be enticed back to the ship, on their good behaviour, by Tupaia. In the afternoon the ship was moved into deeper water and Cook, Banks and Solander landed on the island. All the canoes immediately left the ship and also landed, and almost in a moment the party was surrounded by an armed and jostling crowd. Cook drew a line upon the sand, on which some of the natives began a war dance and others attempted to seize the ship's boats. This failing, they made two rushes which were repelled with small shot, and then, uncertain, seemed only to need some one to rally them again. In the meantime Hicks, seeing the dangerous scramble, swung the ship round to bring its broadside to bear, and fired the four-pounders over their heads. This dispersed the crowd; after an interval Cook, seeing some who had taken refuge in a cave, made friends with three of them; and then, going to a different part of the island, he was met by others, now become 'as meek as lambs'. The boats were loaded with celery, and return made to the ship with the intention of sailing next morning. But the wind fell, it was impossible to get to sea, and Cook took soundings of the harbour instead. He also had three sailors flogged for digging up potatoes from one of the Maori plantations. The natives flocked about the ship and some came on board, dealing in odds and ends 'very fair and friendly'. Very friendly also were those on the south side of the bay, where Cook and the botanists landed to inspect the country, and on the island of Motu-rua, where a party went for water and to cut grass for the sheep on board; friendly also everywhere when Cook, Banks and Solander landed, inviting them on shore, selling quantities of fish, and showing them over a pa—a 'neat compact place', well situated and well fortified as usual. It was a green and pleasant part of the country, diversified with small hills and valleys, highly cultivated in many places, and certainly more thickly populated than any tract hitherto seen. There was plenty of fish of many kinds, in catching which both by hook and line and with the net the Maori put the European very much to shame. So many islands were there that Cook called this port the Bay of Islands; these made more than one excellent harbour, and he could affirm with certainty, for future comers, that the bay afforded good anchorage and every kind of refreshment. But time forbade the making of an accurate survey—an omission which was later repaired by a variety of ships, when the Bay of Islands became the favourite port of call for vessels in New Zealand waters. Early in the morning on 5 December, all that was possible being done, the anchor was weighed, but the wind was too little and too variable to take the ship out of the bay till next morning; indeed the tide or the current nearly carried her ashore on one of the islands. She was towed clear. An hour later she struck a sunken rock, fortunately without damage. It was thought for a moment to be a whale, and Whale Rock it remains.
Now began a period which must have tried the temper and the patience of any commander. It shows Cook as a discoverer at his best. One of his tasks was to fix the position of the country as precisely as possible, and he was determined to ignore no essential point. He was facing almost a month of weather that varied from merely contrary winds to furious storm, but the observations he had set himself to make he made with an accuracy which for ordinary men would have been remarkable under the most favourable conditions. For ten days he tacked off and on up the last hundred miles of the eastern coast with the wind almost continually from the west and the north. Canoes came out from the Cavalli Islands, and on the 9th, in a calm, from the coast near Doubtless Bay; and from these a little fish was bought. Although the bottom of Doubtless Bay could just be seen, the wind forbade a visit. Next day, notes Banks, the wind was 'as hard hearted as ever', but the behaviour of the ship was 'much to the credit of our old Collier'; indeed the Whitby-built collier was now to demonstrate all her virtues as a vessel of discovery. Round the headland called Knuckle Point was the beginning of another bay—Sandy or Rangaunu Bay—which marked the southern extremity of the narrow stretch of low land running up to the triangle in the north, 'a desart shore' with the solitary high hill or hump Cook named Mount Camel. No place on earth could look more barren than these narrow ridges of sand lying parallel to the straight coast. On the nearest ridge behind the beach were a few shrubs, but the absence of green behind that persuaded Cook—and rightly so—that beyond was the western sea, though he underestimated the distance. Even here, however, two villages were seen, and a few canoes, which tried but failed to come up with the ship; and in the bay was good anchorage.
On the morning of 13 December, after a rainy night, the gales began, and the ship was out of sight of land for the first time since she had been upon the coast. A squall split the main topsail, the start of many days of hard work for the sailmaker repairing torn and sorely-tried canvas. Luckily there were intervals of clear weather. At noon on the 14th the Endeavour was north-east but in sight of a point of land which had been seen before, and was now taken to be the northern extremity of the country, as a heavy swell coming from the west argued the impossibility of any covering of land. Forced east and northwest, Cook got by the 19th within three or four miles of the point again, close enough to examine it and fix its position with great accuracy. It was North Cape, the north-east point of his Sandy Bay, and upon it a pa and a few inhabitants were seen. A strong easterly current near the cape was also against the ship, which, noted Cook the day before, had 'not gained one inch to windward this last 24 hours'. By the 21st at noon they were out of sight of land again, though the weather was clear, and next day were thirty-eight leagues north of the North Cape. The next four days gave much pleasanter weather; on the 24th the Three Kings was recognized, and its position fixed. It was well that the weather had improved; Banks, with possibly a more festal mind than Cook's, made the entry in his journal for the following day, 'Christmas day, our Goose pye was eat with great approbation and in the Evening all hands were as Drunk as our forefathers usd to be upon the like occasion'. The geese thus consumed were gannets. On the 26th, by Cook's observation, they were in the latitude of the Bay of Islands and only about thirty leagues westward of the longitude of the North Cape, yet no land was in sight: the northern part of the country must indeed be narrow. In the afternoon they had a fresh gale which in thirty-six hours rose to hurricane force—'a meer hurricane attended with rain and the Sea run prodigious high'. Twice the ship had to be brought to for some hours, and the gale abated merely to renew itself; the Endeavour was blown to the west, then got to the north-east and crossed her previous course. The wind was now from the south-west, and the south-west sea ran so high that she went bodily to leeward. The course was a series of tacks and zigzags, but Cook was determined to get a sight of Cape Maria van Diemen and fix its position. He saw it at last about eighteen miles off on the morning of the 30th, and kept it in sight for almost three days, having in sight on 1 January 1770, indeed, the North Cape also across the flat peninsula. His latitude for Cape Maria van Diemen was only two minutes out; his longitude only four.
The words of Admiral Wharton, like Cook a seaman and a hydrographer, may here very well be quoted for the fireside reader. Cook's calculations, he says, are extraordinarily accurate, 'seeing that the ship was never close to the Cape, and the observations were all taken in bad weather. . . . The persistence with which Cook clung to this point until he could resume his exploration and examination of the coast is very characteristic of the man. He would not willingly miss a mile of it, nor did he.' And again, 'The mingled audacity and caution of Cook's navigation off this coast must awake the admiration of every seaman.'—Wharton, Captain Cook's Journal, pp. 176, n. 1, 178.
He could now make south, and did so after the comment: 'I cannot help thinking but what will appear a little strange that at this season of the year we should be three weeks in geting 10 Leagues to the westward and five weeks in geting 50 Leagues for so long it is sence we pass'd Cape Brett but it will hardly be credited that in the midest of summer and in the Latitude of 35° such a gale of wind as we have had could have happen'd, which for its strength and continuence was such as I hardly was ever in before. Fortunately at this time we were at a good distance from land otherwise it might have proved fatal to us.'
Nor was the gale yet over, nor the struggle to keep the coast in view. On 2 January there was no land in sight, and a wind blowing right on shore and 'a high rowling Sea' from the west made it dangerous to go too near. But edging in to the southeast the ship on the morning of the 4th was about five leagues off what looked like a bay or inlet; Cook sailed two leagues closer in, and deciding that he had been deceived called the spot False Bay—it was in fact the opening of Kaipara Harbour. He had missed a good deal of the coast, though sailing northwest again he could judge very well its direction; what he could see wore a most desolate and inhospitable aspect, and his chart of this part of the country bears the inscription The Desart Coast. The prevailing wind and the great sea must make it very dangerous: 'this I am so fully sencible of that was we once clear of it I am determind not to come so near again if I can possible avoide it unles we have a very favourable wind indeed'. That afternoon there were renewed squalls with rain, and the south-west gale and swell continuing Cook stood to the north-west still. It was the last of the storm, however; on the 6th the weather was clear and pleasant, he was able to run a short distance north-west, and at daylight next morning was again in sight of Cape Maria van Diemen, eight or nine leagues off. The following noon, south once more, in gentle breezes from the north-east, Hokianga Harbour was seen; though Cook, not close enough for an accurate view, inclined to think that what seemed a break in the coast was merely low-lying land. On the 9th he was a second time abreast of Kaipara, and next day, a good stretch south-east, found the land green and tree-covered. He named Woody Head, Gannet Island, and Albatross Point, and noticed the shelter against southerly winds provided by Kawhia Harbour, though he gave it no name.
The better progress Cook was now making may be judged from his entries of distance run in 24 hours: 28 December, N. 29 miles; 29 December, E. by N. 29 miles; 8 January, S.E. 53 miles; 9 January, S.E. 69 miles; 10 January, S.E. 69 miles. The Endeavour was never at the best of times a fast sailer; in fresh S.W. gales, standing to the N.W. 'with a prest sail' she did on 5 January 102 miles; next day she did only 8. Such were the chances of eighteenth-century exploration. There might well be a special dispensation for sailors' language.
In the evening the southernmost land in sight was a very high mountain shaped like the Peak of Teneriffe; for the next three days it was sometimes in sight towering above the clouds, sometimes hidden in dark cloudy weather. It was 'of a prodigious height and its top is cover'd with everlasting snow', and Cook named it in honour of the Earl of Egmont, an earlier First Lord. The flat country about the mountain was verdurous and wood-covered; the rounded promontory at its seaward foot was also called after Egmont. A fire on shore at night proved that the country was inhabited. Past the cape the direction of the eastern coast was still followed, until early on the morning of the 14th land was seen bearing south-west by south. For this land Cook now made, well to the west of Kapiti, called by him Entry Island. In the evening he was two leagues off, apparently on the south-west side of a deep and wide inlet which ran round to Cape Egmont, but the bottom of which could not be seen; he was, in fact, in the great 'bay' where Tasman and Visscher had had such a stormy time a hundred and thirty years before. The land was high and broken and the shore formed a number of bays. Into one of these Cook resolved to go; for the ship was very foul and called for small repairs, and he was once more in need of wood and water. After plying on and off all night, he stood in next morning for an inlet which ran into the land south-west, between a reef of rocks lying off its north-west point and some rocky islands off the other. The tide, or a current, carried the ship within two cables' length of the north-west shore, but with the help of the boats she got clear, in sight of a startled sea-lion which rose up twice near by. A canoe was seen crossing the bay, and a village on the point of an island a few miles within the entrance. It was clear settled weather; there was little wind, and for some time the boats towed the ship; she hauled close round the south-west end of the island before a crowd of natives all in arms, and at 2 o'clock in the afternoon anchored in 'a very snug Cove', on the north-west side of the inlet facing the south-west end of the island. So came the Endeavour to the calm and lovely little bay, clad in undying green, where Cook was so often in the future to find secure haven, which he called Ship Cove.
Scarcely had the ship moored than the natives were round her, heaving stones as usual. But conversation with Tupaia brought a few of them on board, to receive the ordinary presents. Next morning they were back again, bringing with them some 'stinking' fish—that is, dried fish, one of their ordinary articles of diet—which Cook in spite of his distaste bought to encourage traffic in provisions. Theft, not trade, however, appeared to be their object, and as they seemed likely to prove quarrelsome, Cook fired some small shot at one of the principal offenders, keeping them at a proper distance while the ship's company were too busy to counter constant interference, and perhaps attack. After this relations were most amicable. In the cove was an excellent fresh-water stream, and as for wood 'the land here is one intire forest'. The first afternoon a net was hauled from the shore and gathered in three hundredweight of fish. There was, then, all that was required for the primary need of refreshment, and on the two following days the ship was careened
This is Cook's word; but the ship was not 'careened' in the strict sense—i.e. laid ashore. She was heeled on each side where she lay at anchor.
and her sides scrubbed and tarred. The three weeks spent in the cove were hardly a time of leisured ease—there was caulking to be done and rigging to be repaired; water-casks needed attention from the cooper; a forge was set up, and the armourers and carpenters were busied securing the tiller, which had often been in danger of breaking; there were stones to be loaded for ballast, casks to fill, wood to cut; and there was always fishing, to maintain the supply of fresh food, grass to gather for the sheep, powder to dry. It is pleasant to add that on the morning of Sunday, 21 January, the whole ship's company were given leave to go ashore at the watering-place 'to amuse themselves as they thought proper', and that it was a fine day. There were few enough such interludes in the eighteenth-century sailor's life. Pleasant also is it to note (we learn it from Lieutenant Hicks) that while the Endeavour remained in Ship Cove, so abundant was fish that there was served neither beef nor pork, those aged companions of the sea, nor the long-stored flour, 'and very few Pease'. But Cook, in his passion for health, maintained the breakfasts of portable soup and wild celery.
It was indeed a harbour to ravish the mind of man. While Hicks, as chief officer, superintended the manifold operations in the cove, Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander were free to embark on the observation of nature and the accumulation of specimens —though on their expeditions the thickness of the woods and of the climbing plants hindered them much—or to accompany the captain on his numerous excursions about the inlet and on its shores. The country was all high hills and deep valleys, the trees were magnificent, 'fit for all purposes excepting Ships Masts', for which the wood was too hard and heavy. There were plenty of shags and a few other wild fowl, which contributed to the larder; and there were those other birds, the description of which makes so charming and eternally fresh a page in Banks's journal. 'This morn', he writes on 17 January, 'I was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells but with the most tuneable silver sound imaginable to which maybe the distance was no small addition. On enquiring of our people I was told that they had observd them ever since we have been here, and that they begin to sing at about 1 or 2 in the morn and continue till sunrise, after which they are silent all day like our nightingales.' Nor was the Maori less interesting than this shy herald of the dawn, and Mr. Banks could turn with equal fascination from birds to cannibals. The people seemed poorer here than in the country farther north, their canoes were mean and unornamented, they had no cultivations nor anything to sell except fish. 'I suppose they live intirely upon fish dogs and Enemies', wrote Banks; but they also lived on fern roots, scorched in the fire and pounded to expose the pith. There were hardly more than three or four hundred of them, reckoned Cook; but poor as they were, there was this to be said for their common sense, that they very readily took nails as exchange for fish, and unlike their fellows in the north, instead of setting value on paper (which spoiled when wet) or native cloth from Tahiti, 'shew'd an extraordinary fondness' for English broadcloth and red kersey. Here the custom of the native women was noticed, as it had already been at Mercury Bay, of cutting themselves about the face and body till they streamed with blood, as a sign of mourning. And here also there was irrefragable proof of the cannibalism that was already suspected, and had drawn the dreadful interest of all curious inquirers into the behaviour of mankind. The day after the ship anchored Cook and Banks went in the pinnace to another cove near by, where they met a group of natives who had evidently been lately eating human flesh: Cook got from them the bone of a forearm, quite fresh and recently picked. They had a few days before, they said, taken a canoe belonging to strangers or enemies—the words appeared synonymous—and killed and eaten the occupants; a woman whose floating body the pinnace had passed had been drowned in the fray. When Cook, to make more fully certain, said the bone was not a man's but a dog's, he was contradicted in both words and pantomime. Next morning, from natives alongside the ship, Banks got another bone of the same sort; 'and to shew us that they had eat the flesh they bit and naw'd the bone and draw'd it thro' their mouth and this in such a manner as plainly shew'd that the flesh to them was a dainty bit.' Thus wrote Cook. That it really was regarded 'as a dainty', however, the humane Mr. Banks was reluctant to believe. Later, three human hip-bones were found near a native oven; there were bones lying in the village on the island; while to add to the macabre, there were brought on view to the ship the preserved heads of four of the men recently killed—one of which Banks, science triumphing over tenderness, succeeded in buying to add to his natural history collection.
Even these matters, however, were secondary to Cook's main purpose of geographical discovery, and this he urged forward in more than one direction. The inlet of which Ship Cove formed part must, he thought, be not far from the Murderers' Bay of Tasman—which was in fact seventy miles to the west-north-west—but as he saw nothing of Tasman's bay, so he could learn nothing traditional of Tasman's visit. He made two excursions towards the sea, to survey the western shore of the inlet, met with an excellent harbour—perhaps Little Waikawa Bay—but saw no inhabitants or cultivated land to break the close covering of trees and bush. On 22 January, however, there was a more remarkable expedition. That morning Cook went in the pinnace in the opposite direction, to examine the head of the inlet. This could not be done: it ran a good twenty miles from Ship Cove, and there was more than one chance of taking a wrong direction; so, after rowing twelve or fifteen miles against the wind and seeing no probability of reaching an end, Cook landed at noon on the eastern side to take a higher view. Leaving Banks and Solander to botanize, he climbed with a sailor to the top of one of the hills.
Cook appears to have rowed down to a point where Ruakaka Bay began to open up, with Dieffenbach Point and the entrance to Tory Channel ahead on his left. If one follows him not merely on the map, but on the spot, it seems likely that he climbed the steep hill called Kaitapeha, 1,268 feet, which would give him an excellent view. See Journals, I, p. 238, n. 4.
Even from this height he could not see up the inlet because of higher hills beyond, which were blocked by impenetrable bush. He was 'abundantly recompenced', however, for his climb: below was the inlet, but to the east lay open ocean, and from it a strait to that western sea which he had already traversed. The land on which he stood seemed to be merely a narrow ridge of very high hills, part of the south-west side of this strait; on the western side of the inlet the land stretched away as far as the eye could see. Tasman's great 'bay' was then a strait after all, as he had thought possible, and Visscher had thought probable. This was indeed an interesting discovery. Below also lay some islands which Cook had previously taken for part of the mainland, and behind these islands—Blumine and Pickersgill— he passed, examining the bays and coves, on the return journey to the ship. He thought it likely that the inlet led into the eastern sea; but on the 24th, visiting the pa on the island first seen the afternoon of the ship's arrival, he learned that this was not so—it turned away to the westward. Two days later Cook, Banks and Solander made another 'excursion' into one of the bays on the eastern side;
Probably somewhere in East Bay.
they ascended a very high hill, from which they saw the strait stretching full before them with the opposite shore about twelve miles away. There was haze in the south-east. 'However,' wrote Cook, 'I had now seen enough of this passage to convence me that there was the greatest probability in the world of its runing into the Eastern Sea as the distance of that Sea from this place cannot exceed 20 Leagues even to where we were, upon this I resolve'd after puting to sea to search this passage with the Ship.' On the top of the hill were a number of loose stones; of these the three men built a pyramid, and leaving in it some musket balls, small shot, beads, and other articles likely to last, went down the hill to find the boat's crew and Tupaia with several of the natives, 'seting in the most free and friendly manner immagineable'. Tupaia was indeed an invaluable companion.
The last of Cook's expeditions was on the 29th, to the mouth of the inlet, on the western point of which he landed. Climbing a hill he had a view of the coast to the north-west and of an island about ten leagues off, which was the farthest land he could see in that direction. Between this island and the point where he was standing were other islands lying close to the shore, along which were many bays affording safe anchorage. The island Cook called Stephens, the point Jackson, after the two secretaries to the Admiralty. On top of this hill, before returning, he raised a pile of stones, as he had done on the eastern side, with a piece of an old pennant flying on top, and inside it a silver coin and some musket balls and beads. He was now almost ready to depart, and had the carpenter prepare two posts, with the ship's name and the date cut on them. One of these was set up at the watering-place, with the 'Union flag'
i.e. not the present flag, but that of the Union of England and Scotland.
hoisted on it; and next morning, 31 January, the other was taken over to the island, Motuara. Cook first visited the pa, and through Tupaia explained that he wished to set up a mark on the island, in order to show any other ship that came to the inlet that the Endeavour had already been there. No objection was made; the people even promised not to pull the post down. Every one in attendance was then handed a present, the old men in particular silver threepenny pieces, and spike nails with the broad arrow deeply cut in them—all things that might well be carefully preserved. In a very friendly atmosphere the post was carried up to the highest part of the island, on the southern end, fixed fast in the ground, and a flag hoisted. The inlet was then dignified with the name of Queen Charlotte's Sound, and with the lands adjacent formally taken possession of 'in the name and for the use of his Majesty'. The health of the amiable consort of King George III was drunk in a bottle of wine, and the empty bottle given to an old man, who was much pleased; and who subsequently, either through his own merits or as representative of the Maori race, was the commander's guest at dinner. While the post was being erected on the island Cook had had some geographical conversation with this elder, who was quite plain that a passage did run into the eastern sea. Cook 'had some conjectors' that the land southwest of the strait was an island and not a continent; he was informed that there were two 'Wannuaes', or islands, called Tovy-poenammu, that might be circumnavigated in 'a few days, even four'; a third land lay on the eastern side of the strait, a large land called Aeheino Mouwe, which could be sailed round only in many moons; the part directly bordering the strait was Teirawhitte. How are we to interpret this? The 'Wannuaes' certainly were whenua, lands or countries or districts, one of which must have been the island of Aropawa, on which Cook had already stood when he climbed the hill and saw the strait; and this was the island that could be circumnavigated in a few days.
Cook, I think, got the story wrong. See the footnote on p. 243 of Journals, I, with its quotation from Pickersgill's journal.
The other was Te Wai Pounamu, the whole of what we call the South Island, 'the Water of Greenstone', because in the river-beds of its west coast was found the green stone of Maori weapons and ornaments. The second name has been a constant puzzle. The North Island was traditionally called Te Ika a Maui, 'the Fish of Maui'. Perhaps it was a variant of this, He hi no Maui, 'a thing fished up by Maui'; for Cook's renderings of Polynesian names are generally intelligible. Te rawhiti meant the land to the east; Cook bestowed the name specifically on a cape.
Till the end of January there had been only one rainy day; on 1 February, however, there was such a storm that the hawser mooring the ship to the shore broke, and in the overflow of the stream ten water-casks were carried away and lost; while, noted Banks, 'Our poor little wild musicians were totaly disturbd' by the rain. When the weather cleared the wind was from the north, and departure was delayed. It was possible to spend some time fishing for amusement and collecting shells; but in the afternoon of the 5th the ship was warped out of the cove and got under sail. The wind then fell and it was necessary to anchor again just above Motuara. It was not till the following afternoon that Cook was out of the Sound and round Cape Koamaru, standing over eastward to get well into the strait before the ebb tide made. By seven o'clock he was four miles west of two small islands, the Brothers, the wind had fallen nearly calm, and the tide making out at about four or five knots, the ship was rapidly close upon one of the islands. She was saved within two cables' length of the rocks by a lucky slight change of direction in the tide, and by being brought to an anchor in seventy-five fathoms of water, with twice that length of cable out. About midnight the tide abated, and Cook made sail over for the eastern shore a short distance, till the wind freshening, he was able to sweep through the narrowest part of the strait on the next ebb tide, and stand away for the southernmost land in sight, south by west. Inland, to the south, he could see another 'prodegious high mountain', the white summit of Tapuaenuku. The southernmost point of Aeheino-mouwe he named Cape Pallisser,
Palliser wrote his name both with two s's and one: after getting his baronetcy in 1773 he kept to one, hence our modern spelling.
after the early patron and constant friend who had been almost his first commander in the navy. He was too far off to see the entrance to Port Nicholson; between Terawhiti and Palliser the land was 'tollerable high makeing in Table points', and the shore appeared to form two bays. In the afternoon of 7 February the ship was abreast of Cape Campbell, the south-eastern limit of the strait; but after she had steered along shore for some hours, a breeze from the south-west sprang up, and Cook, turning about, put the ship right before it. Some of the officers had suddenly caught, and exceeded, Cook's own scepticism; Aeheinomouwe might not be an island, they urged, a few leagues of the coast had not been examined, the land might turn away east between Palliser and Turnagain and become a continent after all. Cook had no such supposition in his mind, nevertheless to clear up every doubt he stood north-east, till on the 9th Turnagain was once more in sight, the continental school was confounded, and there was, if we may judge from the wording of Cook's journal, some quiet amusement. Off Cape Palliser three canoes paddled out to the ship, and natives who boarded it asked for nails, which they had heard of though they did not know their use—a sure proof, thought Cook, that these men must have relations with others as far north as Kidnappers as well as south to Queen Charlotte's Sound, where nails had also been in demand. Two other canoes came off from Castle Point (another of Cook's names), while the ship, having sighted the cape, was sailing south again, and there was a little trade.
On the 14th the Endeavour was opposite the high snowy mountain which had been sighted a week before, and was now seen to lift itself from a whole great ridge almost as high, rising from the shore and running parallel to it south-west. In the afternoon, off the Kaikoura peninsula, four double canoes came out, but would not draw alongside, in spite of all Tupaia's persuasiveness; they had evidently never heard of the ship before, and shook their spears in a very threatening manner. Cook called the peninsula the 'Lookers on' after them —a name later transferred to the range of mountains inland. In the night he ran eleven leagues to the south-east, as some persons on the ship thought they had seen land in that direction; but there was none save that to the west. The weather was clear, with sometimes light breezes and calms; and Mr. Banks was able to go out light-heartedly in a small boat and shoot albatrosses for his collection—the Ancient Mariner had not yet been written, and he had no sense of sin. He was indeed shortly to distinguish the country by presenting his name to part of it.
On the 16th land was seen apparently detached from the coast, and in the clear air of sunrise next morning this impression was confirmed, for the main coast of Tovy Poenammu lay 'open to the westward' of it; Banks's Island was accordingly the name here given. There was the opening of a bay or harbour near its south point; the surface was very broken and uneven, but smoke and people were seen.
Banks Peninsula adjoins very low land, and Cook, after his detour to the south-east, had not come back close enough to the coast to see its exact nature before further land was sighted bearing S. by W. Other men have noted how exactly, from certain aspects, it resembles an island. Sailing south, outside the peninsula, and turning under it so as to come just past Akaroa harbour, Cook very naturally charted, as the coastline further west, the outline of the higher land in from the shore and the neck of the peninsula.
Possibly, by keeping close in with the coast of this 'island', as he made into the mainland again, Cook might have discovered his error; but the morning before, about the time the 'island' was sighted, Lieutenant Gore thought he saw land to the south-east. Cook was convinced that it was only a bank of clouds, and nothing was seen all day; but Gore remained steadfast in his opinion, so that all the 17th Cook put the matter to the proof by running southeast, and then during the night and next morning south by west. No sign of land was seen, and he therefore hauled to the westward—thinking, on the basis of what he had learnt at Queen Charlotte's Sound, that he must now be far enough south to get right round the island. But it was not to be circumnavigated in four days, he had mistaken his information; and although Gore's wild goose chase had deprived him of forty or fifty miles of coastline it seemed likely that the land sighted again on the morning of the 19th was part of Tovy Poenammu. The land was low and flat near the shore, though hills stood up behind, and seemed at first sight barren.
The wind now veered to the south, and for four days, in weather that swung between calm and strong winds, sometimes dark and gloomy and with a head sea, the Endeavour tacked in and out from the coast, losing ground about six leagues. At sunset on the 22nd the weather cleared, and the coast was seen more distinctly than before, a mountain range inland and one high peak visible. Whether indeed this was still Tovy Poenammu Cook was left to guess till he sailed up the continuous western coast, though certainly the country was larger than he had gathered from what he was told. Banks was out in a small boat again, shooting sea-birds; but a favourable breeze at last springing up and turning to a fresh gale which carried away two small spars, by the night of the 24th the ship was off the high bluff called Cape Saunders (in honour of the admiral under whom Cook had served at Quebec), from which the land trended away to the south-west. It was a green and woody land, and hilly; there was no sign of inhabitants. Although two or three bays north of the cape tempted Cook to land, he was anxious not to lose time, rather to push on. He reckoned without the weather. After 'whifling all round the Compass' from gale to calm, the wind went to the south-west on the evening of the 25th, and for six days there were hard gales. Sails split, and by the 28th the ship was 120 miles to the south and an even greater distance to the east; for a few hours Cook stood to the north and then to the south-west, as far as latitude 48°. There was a heavy swell from the south-west, which argued the absence of land in that quarter. On 1 March he stood to the northward once more, and on 3 March, the weather having moderated and the wind gone to the north, westward with all the sail he could make. Next morning whales, seals, and one small penguin were passed, and at noon Cape Saunders was seen again to the north, with more land stretching west by south; as there was no land in sight directly to the south it was hoped that at last the south-eastern limit of the island had been reached.
Cook's chart of this part of the coast is clearly marked, and includes one large bay, Molineux's Harbour, named after the master of the Endeavour, which receives no mention in his journal. The name was obviously conferred later. Curiously enough, it changed its position. On what appears to be Cook's first chart, it applies to Waikawa harbour; on later ones, by a clearly discernible process, it moves up to the bay at the mouth of the Clutha river. See Journals, I, p. 264, n. 4. The Clutha was for many years called the Molyneux (the name is spelt both ways in the records of the voyage).
But towards evening, in clearer weather, Mr. Banks, who had taken sides, wrote joyfully, 'we Continents had the pleasure to see more land to the Southward'. This land was certainly inhabited, as was proved by a large fire at night. On the 5th, after a thick and hazy morning, the mainland was seen to bear north, while to the west was some land lying low, with higher land behind it stretching round to the south; 'We could not see this land join to that to the northward of us, there either being a total seperation, a deep bay or low land between them'. The low land already referred to was evidently an island.
Here the problem of the real nature of Foveaux Strait presented itself to Cook. The island was Ruapuke; it is called on Cook's chart Bench Island, but that name has since been transferred to another island.
Cook tacked to the eastward at night, and next day the wind was south-west, so that though he worked south, he made some miles easting as well. At daylight on the 8th, from the masthead, it looked as if the land to the west was joined to Tovy Poenammu, while at the same time there was the appearance of land in the south-west. This proved a mistake, and Cook stood west and south-west all through a moonlit night, past one dangerous ledge of rocks, and near another at daybreak next morning; on them the sea broke high in the air, so that they well earned their name of the Traps. The ship could now sail west, with the southernmost point of land—South Cape—to the north; 'Blew fresh all day', wrote Banks on 10 March, 'but carried us round the Point to the total demolition of our aerial fabrick called continent'; and then the course was turned north. A small rocky island—Solander's Isle—then the mainland again, were sighted early in the morning on the 11th. What then was the land to the south, round which Cook had just sailed? At first he, like his officers, had no doubt that there was a strait, at the eastern end of which the small island had been seen— they thought they could see it again—while the western end now lay open and visible, so that it must be an island; 'but', he says in words that still puzzle us, 'when I came to lay this land down upon paper from the several bearings I had taken it appear'd that there was but little reason to suppose it an Island; on the Contrary I hardly have a doubt but what it joins to and makes a part of the main land.'
It is difficult to follow Cook's reasoning here, and his chart hardly gives it clarity. Hicks writes, Sunday, 11 March 1770: 'At Noon the Island [Solander's Island] SW 4 leags. the extremes of the No.ermost Land from 75° W to 69° E which makes the No.ermost side of the Streights this is ye W.tern opening of the Passage mentioned the 6 Inst: the Passage @ N 69 E to S 72 E the extremes of the large Island which is ye So.ern land of the Streights @ S 72° E to S 41° E distance from the nearest Shore 3½ lgs: no ground at 90 F.' There seems to have been a good deal of discussion of the matter on board, though Banks ignores it. See Journals, I, p. 263, n. 2.
The two entrances to the strait were therefore named on the chart South East Bay and South West Bay. The mainland seemed to afford no harbour and was very rugged, with patches of snow on the hills, but was partly wooded; there was no sign of habitation.
For the next two days there were gales; the ship was forced south to 47° 40' again. It was back in sight of very high land on 13 March, in the morning, and in the afternoon Cook hauled in for a bay, which seemed to offer good anchorage. But the distance was too great to get in before dark, the wind was so strong as to make unsafe an attempt either to enter the bay at night or to keep to windward of it, and he bore away along the shore. Several islands inside this bay promised shelter from all winds; and off its north-west point there were five remarkable peaked rocks, standing up like the fingers and thumb of a man's hand. Cook called this Point Five Fingers. He was to make good use of the harbour on a future voyage; now, as he sailed north, the oncoming night made him call it Dusky Bay. West Cape was the name he gave the extreme south-west point of the island, as it faded into the sunset. For eight days out of the next ten there was a favouring wind, and the chart delineates the west coast without a break. The morning after Dusky Bay was left behind another possible harbour was passed; the opening was narrow, and on each side the land rose high and perpendicular; inland were mountains covered with new-fallen snow—which occasioned no surprise, as the last two days had been very cold. The land hereabouts, thought young Sydney Parkinson, the botanical artist, 'appeared very romantic, having mountains piled on mountains to an amazing height'. There were some who wished Cook to go into the harbour, but this he refused to do, 'because I saw clearly that no winds could blow there but what was either right in or right out. This is Westerly or Easterly, and it certainly would have been highly imprudent in me to have put into a place where we could not have got out but with a wind that we have lately found does not blow but one day in a month.' This inlet therefore he named Doubtful Harbour. Banks, who desperately wanted to land, could never forget his disappointment. On 16 March, at daylight, there was the appearance of still another inlet which proved, however, to be merely a deep valley, bounded by high hills—this Cook called Mistaken Bay; and later passed Cascade Point, where four small streams of water fell down into the sea. Inland the mountains were still white, and some of the valleys even were covered with snow: with ice rather, for these were the west coast glaciers.
Before long the Endeavour was off the coast first sighted by Tasman, and on the 20th the wind veered to the north-west, with hazy weather, rain and squalls. Cook was forced to lose some ground standing to the west, and the prominent point which he sighted on coming back to the land he afterwards named Cape Foulwind. Like Tasman, he remarked on the great, the 'prodigious' swell; on the 22nd, in the morning, while the ship was no more than three or four miles from the shore, the wind fell calm, and 'a large swell from the W.S.W. rowling Obliquely upon the shore . . . put me under a good deal of apprehension that we should be obliged to anchor, but by the help of a light air now and then from the S.W. quarter we were enabled to keep the Ship from driving much nearer the shore'. This was near a bluff head off which lay a number of rocks above water, the headland which Tasman had named Steyle hoeck—Steep point—and Cook now called Rocks Point. By dark next evening the ship had run the length of another point beyond which the land turned to the east—the point he afterwards called Cape Farewell. An easterly wind meant a day's tacking, in which no distance was gained—'The sea is certainly an excellent school for patience', reflected Banks— but on the 25th in a northerly wind an east-south-east course could be set, so that at daylight land was visible to the southeast, and fifteen miles away, Stephens Island. A few hours later the north-west head of Queen Charlotte's Sound was in sight. New Zealand had been circumnavigated, and it was time to think of leaving it. Cook had empty water-casks, however, and knowing that there was a bay between Stephens Island and Point Jackson, where there must be anchorage and convenient watering-places, he ran into the bay and anchored, 'under the west shore in the second Cove within the fore mentioned Islands'. At daylight on the 27th he went in a boat and found both a watering-place and a better position for the ship; and for four days the men were busily employed watering, cutting wood, and fishing with great success, in overcast and rainy weather.
Cook recorded his impressions of the western coast, as of the rest of the country that he saw. There must, he thought, be a continuous chain of mountains from one end of Tovy Poe-nammu to the other—mountains 'which are of a prodigious height and appear to consist of nothing but barren rocks, cover'd in many places with large patches of snow which perhaps have laid their sence the creation. No country upon earth can appear with a more ruged and barren aspect than this doth from the sea for as far inland as the eye can reach nothing is to be seen but the summits of these Rocky mountains which seem to lay so near one enother as not to admit any Vallies between them.' This was in what we know as the Sounds region; further north, beyond latitude 44° 20', the mountains lay more inland, and between them and the sea were heavily wooded hills and valleys, apparently in a fertile land; probably also there were a great many lakes and ponds. From 42° 8' to Cape Farewell the land was not distinguished by anything remarkable; 'it rises into hills directly from the sea and is cover'd with wood'. Nowhere on this coast did Cook find any inhabitants. The bay he was now in he explored in the pinnace so far as time would admit; he could not see the head of it, but between it and Queen Charlotte's Sound there was, he was certain, plenty of good anchorage and shelter for shipping. The land about the bay—called Admiralty Bay—was rough and uneven, covered with bush and fern; as sign of habitation there were only a few long-deserted huts. West of Admiralty Bay, between Cape Stephens—off which Stephens Island lay— and Cape Farewell, was another bay, large and deep, the bottom of which could not be seen as the ship sailed in a straight line past the wide entrance. This great indentation he called Blind Bay; it must, he thought, be Tasman's Murderers' Bay.
Cook was wrong, but not far wrong—he had in reality sailed past two bays divided by the irregular triangle of land that ends in Separation Point, so called by d'Urville; Murderers' (Massacre or Golden) Bay lies to the north-west of Blind (Tasman) Bay.
On returning to the ship, in the evening of 30 March, Cook found her ready for sea. But in what direction should he depart? He was anxious to return home by the route most advantageous to geographical exploration, and he consulted with his officers. To sail by way of Cape Horn was what he most wished, 'because by this rout we should have been able to prove the existence or non existence of a Southern Continent which yet remains doubtfull; but in order to ascertain this we must have kept in a high latitude in the very depth of winter, but the condition of the ship in every respect was not thought sufficient for such an undertaking'. The Endeavour, records Parkinson, was out of sugar, salt, oil, tea and tobacco, and had had no bread for nearly six months. For the same reasons the Cape of Good Hope route was declined—nor would that course have given hope of any new discovery. It was resolved to return, as so many other Pacific navigators had returned, by way of the East Indies—but with a difference: the Endeavour would steer west to the unknown coast of New Holland and make discovery of that as it pushed north. The appendix to Cook's programme was to be as great as all that had gone before.
At daylight on 1 April the ship got under sail and put to sea, in clear weather and with a fresh gale from the south-east. When evening fell Cape Farewell was twelve miles to the east; in the morning New Zealand was lost in rain and cloud.
If Cook had done nothing more on this voyage than chart New Zealand, that survey in itself would have given lustre to his name. 'The situation of few parts of the world are better determined than these Islands are,' he writes, 'being settled by some hundreds of Observations of the Sun and Moon and one of the transit of Mercury. . . . The Chart which I have drawn will best point out the figure and extent of these Islands, the situation of the Bays and harbours they contain and the lesser Islands [that] lay about them.' True, there were places in which the chart could not be considered dependable, and Cook lists them at length;
See Appendix A.
but his general outline, and most of the names he records, have remained. The two great mistakes, 'Banks's Island' and the error concerning Stewart Island, are obvious, and the first of these is adequately explained. The second is more difficult to understand; it appears to have been reasoning from his chart and not from observation that led Cook to conclude that the land was all one. Yet, on the chart that seems to be the earliest complete one we have, and may be of Cook's own workmanship, there are not the dotted lines of a probable conjunction, and the island looks like an island; for evidence of his conclusions we are bound to accept his own written word. We may add that his South Island is too narrow-waisted, because of the difficulty of picking up the line of flat land on its eastern side from out at sea. The major fact is not that such errors are pardonable, even though they be deemed great; it is—and it is an extraordinary fact—that the chart is so free of large error. Never before had there been marine surveying like this, under such conditions. The task of Cook's successors, in completion and clarification of detail, was complex enough, and among them are distinguished names; but, however striking or final their accomplishment, it was on his basis that they built. They came to New Zealand with his chart; it was on that chart that they registered their rectifications.
New Zealand, clearly, was neither a continent nor part of a continent, and those who held to the continental theory must look elsewhere. The chances of finding Terra australis incognita were diminishing, and if some, like Mr. Joseph Banks, clutched at the vanishing shade, it must be prodigiously smaller in extent than had hitherto been supposed. While Cook had dispelled that illusion, both he and Banks had faithfully recorded what could be found out in so short a time, from so limited a number of landings and encounters, about the interior and the people. Hilly and mountainous the country might be, but Aeheinomouwe at least seemed rich and fertile—Banks and Solander retired from New Zealand with four hundred new varieties of plants—and it was the opinion of everybody that all sorts of European grain and fruit and plants would flourish there; 'in short was this Country settled by an Industrus people they would very soon be supply'd not only with the necessarys but many of the luxuries of life'. Birds were not so plentiful as fish, but ducks, shags, gannets and gulls were all eaten and found exceedingly good; 'indeed hardly any thing came amiss to us that could be eat by man'. While dogs and rats were the only animals, rats themselves were so scarce that Cook and many others in the ship never saw one. The trees, as he had already remarked, provided first-rate timber except for masts—and closer examination might reveal some proper for that; the 'broad-bladed grass like flags of the nature of hemp' (our well-known flax or Phormium tenax), would, it was thought, make the best of cordage and canvas. Minerals were a doubtful quantity. If the settlement of a colony should ever be projected, the best place would be the Bay of Islands or the River Thames; for at each place there was a good harbour, and the Thames would give easy communication with the interior. Nor were the natives so united as to make such settlement difficult; they were strong, well made and active, but very much divided into parties—a brave, open, warlike people, thought Cook, and void of treachery. However bellicose their behaviour, 'After they found that our Arms were so much Superior to theirs and that we took no advantage of that superiority and a little time given them to reflect upon it they ever after were our very good friends and we never had an Instance of their attempting to surprize or cut off any of our people when they were ashore, oppertunities for so doing they must have had at one time or a nother.' Their diet, their cannibalism, their fishing, their canoes and carving and feeling for design, their houses and tools, their musical instruments, their dancing and remarkable sense of rhythm, their manner of mourning, even their religion —on all these things there was some revealing comment to make. Those articles that could be acquired in trade were acquired, but of the 'green talk', or talc, axes or adzes, Cook could gain none, whatever he offered; so greatly was greenstone valued. Not for nothing was Te Wai Pounamu so named. And the Maori himself—whence came he? Both at the Bay of Islands and at Queen Charlotte's Sound there had been mention of some northern land, knowledge of which was, it seemed clear, only 'traditionary'. Banks thought immigration must be from the west; the universality of the South Sea islanders' language, thought Cook himself, was 'a sufficient proff that both they and the New Zelanders have had one Origin or Source, but where this is, even time perhaps may never discover'. Time has shown greater ability than Cook foresaw, though it has given us also controversy; it has restored to us Kupe, whom Cook would eagerly have talked with, as men converse among their peers.
4 Cook To D'Urville
First among the improvers on Cook came Cook. New Zealand was not to him henceforth an end but a means. He had given it, as an insular land, to geography, and for him, in spite of the known defects of his coastal exploration, it had become neither challenge nor problem but a base. His consuming interest was the elucidation of the whole southern ocean, the proof or disproof of the existence of the southern continent. But on his second voyage, that voyage which in its conception and execution was probably the most perfect of all the great voyages in the history of discovery, he did make plainer, in some signal respects, the outline of the country. There were two ships on that voyage, Cook's own Resolution and Tobias Furneaux's Adventure; the plan was to sail down first into high latitudes from the Cape of Good Hope, and so east, making rendezvous and seeking refreshment at Queen Charlotte's Sound. Three times in 1773 and 1774 Cook visited the Sound, once to find Furneaux there and twice without him; and again on his third voyage in 1777, before he sailed north to the Arctic and the last confused and fatal passage at the Hawaiian islands. Each visit was valuable to men much tried by the rigours of the sea, but only one added to geographical knowledge, and before then another piece of investigation had both added to knowledge and provided a basis for the sealing that became New Zealand's first industry. This was the charting of Dusky Sound.
Cook and Furneaux, in 1772, came into the Pacific from the west. The ships left the Cape on 22 November, and for weeks in December and January were in the midst of masses of ice. On 17 January 1773 their position was latitude 67° 15', longitude 30° 35' E., where they were blocked by an immense icefield from further progress south, and were forced to turn north-east. In a gale on 8 February they parted, to meet again only after more than three months. Cook, nearly four months out of sight of land, wished to put into some southern harbour, and sighting the New Zealand coast on 25 March made first, in a thick haze, for the entrance of what he took to be his Dusky Bay. It was, however, Chalky Inlet, some twenty miles to the south, and not till next day did he cautiously enter Dusky, and moor his vessel under Anchor Island. In the afternoon Cook and one of his lieutenants, Pickersgill, went in search of a better anchorage; both were successful, but Cook preferring the lieutenant's, next morning the ship was warped into the little cove on the southern shore of the sound called Pickersgill Harbour, and moored with her yards among the branches of the great trees, and a natural gangway in the shape of one inclined, almost horizontal, trunk from ship to shore. Fine, even ideal, anchorage this was, and here the Resolution remained till 29 April. While the ship was overhauled in hull and rigging, a forge and an observatory were set up in spaces cleared for them; wooding and watering went energetically forward; fish (which was very abundant), fowl, seal and wild celery varied the diet of salt pork and ship's bread; a 'spruce beer' was successfully brewed (we have the recipe) from the leaves of rimu and manuka; and Cook and his officers made an almost complete survey of the sound, a very complicated network of islands, inlets, and coves. This was the finest piece of detailed surveying done on any of his voyages, and the resultant chart one of the most beautiful to come from them. The only part which had to be neglected was the northern arm, which Cook thought might possibly run into Doubtful Harbour—a very tentative opinion which left its mark nevertheless in the spurious 'Mac's Passage' (who 'Mac' was we do not know) of later imaginative maps, in spite of Vancouver's disproof and his completion of the chart in 1791. Few natives were seen, but with one family at least very friendly relations were established; none seemed to have settled habitation. The weather, over the greater part of the stay, was very wet; so pure was the air, however, so plentiful the fresh food, so efficacious the beer, that sickness rapidly disappeared, and the ship left the sound with but few words of discontent. Lieutenant Clerke, who had eaten well, refers to 'the happy taughtness' of his jacket, and remarks, 'I do think that Dusky Bay, for a Set of Hungry fellows after a long passage at Sea is as good as any place I've ever yet met with'. Though the interior consisted of masses of mountains, such plenty of timber, such means of recruitment for weary seamen, such safe anchorage in every wind, argued that, remote as New Zealand might be from the trade and commerce of the old world, Dusky might yet have a great part to play as a centre of that world's shipping, and Cook was very particular in his sailing directions for entering and leaving the harbour. Though commercial eminence was never in fact to come to this lonely spot, such directions made easy the temporary resort of sealers and the carnage they brought upon the southern coast. Before leaving Pickersgill Harbour, seeds were strewn in the clearings and geese were liberated in Goose Cove—both measures in vain, for the south was not thus to receive immigrants. Cook determined to quit the sound through an opening north of that by which he had entered, and though the ship left its anchorage on 29 April, it was not till 11 May that it emerged between Resolution Island and the mainland, from what is now called Breaksea Sound. Light and variable winds, some calms and some squalls, 'with Hail, Rain, Snow, Thunder and Lightning' (so notes down Pickersgill) and the caution observed in taking careful soundings ahead, amply accounted for the intervening days; which, however, were otherwise filled with surveys and with expeditions to replenish the store of fresh food.
Once free of Dusky Bay, the Resolution made a good passage to Ship Cove, the only excitement rising from some rather dangerous waterspouts off Cape Stephens. On 18 May, the Adventure was found settling down into winter quarters. This was not Cook's way; the ship was refitted for sea, and on 7 June both vessels were steering east through the Strait in quest of the continent. No continent was encountered, and after some weeks recruiting at the Society Islands, a southern course was set which resulted in the discovery of two of the smaller Cook islands and the rediscovery of Tonga. The coast of New Zealand near Table Cape was sighted on 21 October, and on the 24th the ships were off Cook Strait. Heavy squalls had given way to a furious gale which now raged for a week, in which the Adventure parted company for the second time and finally, while the Resolution was blown out to sea and as far south as the Lookers On. About noon on 2 November Cook, once more in the Strait and close to the Aeheinomouwe shore, was off a bay east of Terawhiti, within sight of a promising harbour. Into this he proposed to go. At the entrance tide and wind were against him, and he anchored a mile from the outermost of a reef of black rocks. Natives came out to sell crayfish and Cook added poultry to the livestock of the country, but in the middle of the afternoon a southerly gale came up, the nature of the harbour was unknown, and he thought it best to run for Queen Charlotte's Sound. Port Nicholson, the harbour of the city of Wellington, which he had thus discovered, he was never to enter. At the end of three weeks there was still no sign of Furneaux, and on 25 November Cook sailed again, for the Antarctic, firing guns as he coasted the northern shore of the Strait from Terawhiti to Cape Palliser. He had noticed the island of Mana; he noticed, also, the westward inclination of Wellington harbour. Six days later Furneaux arrived in the sound (he had been blown by the gale as far north as Tolaga Bay), and on 17 December, just as he was making ready to depart, there was the frightful affray at Grass Cove, or Whareunga Bay, which deprived him of ten of his best seamen, killed and eaten. Cook returned, after almost another year of remarkable exploration, in which he had demolished for ever the fancy of the southern continent, on 18 October 1774. Confused rumours of tragedy there were, though he learned that the Adventure had safely come and gone. With the native people he himself had his usual friendly relations, and he both added to and revised his knowledge. On his first visit, in 1770, he had made his attempt to reach the head of the sound, thinking it might lead into the eastern sea—the attempt which had ended in the revelation of the Strait. He had suspected that an opening on the eastern side might itself lead to the sea, and now, setting off on 5 November for another boat excursion, he heard from Maoris that though the sound itself terminated in a bay backed up by high hills, this opening did indeed provide an outlet. It was Tory Channel. He followed it down to the entrance to the Strait, across which he could see the hills of Aeheinomouwe; it was well populated, but time prevented him from visiting a large pa near the entrance, and he returned late to the ship. Of the need of revision he was convinced by William Wales, the astronomer on board the Resolution, whose careful observations revealed that Ship Cove, and indeed the whole of Tovy Poenammu, had been charted on the first voyage 40' too far to the east, and Aeheinomouwe similarly about 30'.
It was William Bayly, the astronomer in the Adventure, who first upset the earlier results, somewhat (I think) to Cook's disgust. See Journals, II, pp. 173-4.
Cook left Queen Charlotte's Sound for the fourth time on 10 November. He returned for a fifth visit on 12 February 1777 and remained a fortnight; but this last voyage contributed nothing to the discovery of New Zealand. The discoverer was bound for the northern hemisphere, and for his death.
It was not the English alone who were interested in Pacific voyages in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Among the precursors of Cook the charming and warm-hearted Bougainville had been eminent, and as this century drew to its close, and early in the next, Frenchmen made voyages which were of much geographical importance. First upon the coast of New Zealand, however—in fact, the first commander to see the western coast of New Zealand since Tasman—was Jean François Marie de Surville, a man able indeed, but neither interested primarily in scientific knowledge nor to be numbered with the most attractive of his countrymen. Surville's voyage ended tragically for him, as it involved tragedy for others; but to his officers we owe many pages of interesting report on the natives of the north, which rank as ethnographical material with the observations of Banks and Cook. This voyage owed its inception, so it appears, to exaggerated reports of Wallis's discovery of Tahiti in 1767, garbled up with other reports, perhaps of Easter Island, and Surville was one of a syndicate of three officers of the French East India Company, who intended to exploit the wealth of the island before the English could return. Being only 700 leagues west of Peru, it must, they seem to have fancied, contain a great deal of gold. They owned a vessel called the Saint Jean Baptiste, and in this, leaving Pondicherry in India on 2 June 1769, with a crew of seamen and soldiers, ostensibly for trade in China, Surville sailed south by way of the Philippines, and the Bashi and Solomon Islands. As a voyage of exploitation his was doomed, for when he started Cook had already been in Tahiti six weeks. He reached latitude 14° on 12 November, when the health of his men was so bad that instead of steering east he determined to strike further south and call for refreshment at the land Tasman had discovered. He sailed to 35° before changing his course, and it was noon on 12 December, in latitude 35° 37', just south of Hokianga, that he sighted New Zealand. On that day Cook was nearly opposite, on the other side of the island, half a league from the shore. The country did not look accessible, though the smoke of many fires argued a large population, and Surville decided to double the northern extremity. Unfavourable winds kept him tacking for two days, when the wind swung violently to west-north-west and the ship for some time was in great danger. On the 15th a daring attempt to double Reef Point proved successful, the weather improved, and next day Cape Maria van Diemen and the Three Kings were sighted. The westerly gale had blown Cook out of sight of land, but Surville, making east and not west, was in happier case. At midday on the 16th he was six leagues north of the most northerly point of the land—Kerr Point—which the officers named Cape Surville; North Cape was doubled and Surville was in sight of the long coast which Cook a few days earlier had called Sandy Bay. Cook was now about fifty miles to the north, and a little east of Surville, and at the beginning of his long battle with the winds to chart accurately the most northern coastline. Surville made south, and off another bay—perhaps Rangaunu, which Cook had included in Sandy Bay, perhaps Doubtless— four canoes came off, traded and exchanged presents; a chief, boarding the ship, even gave his dog-skin cloak for a coat and a pair of red breeches. On 17 December Surville anchored three miles inside Doubtless Bay, and here till the last day of the year he remained.
It was time that he should come to harbour—in the previous two months no fewer than sixty men had died, and the rest were so enfeebled by scurvy that they could hardly handle the boats. The natives, after a preliminary show of hostility, displayed much friendship, and the chief acquired some very desirable presents; each day the sick were sent ashore, and the greenstuff and fresh water made an immediate improvement in their condition. Surville indeed, it seems, might have stayed indefinitely, had he observed as much prudence in dealing with men as he did skill in managing his ship. But he had been denied the gift of wisdom. On 27 December the wind changed, harrying Cook at sea and Surville in harbour, and next morning in a hurricane a cable parted and the ship began to drift. Surville was forced to make sail, sacrificing his other cables and anchors, and saved the ship only within twenty yards of a line of rocks, on which the sea broke frighteningly. Not till the afternoon was she once more secure, with the loss of a sunken dinghy. Meanwhile, on the same day, three boats had gone to the head of the bay, and only two of them had been able to return. The third had been in the most extreme danger from rocks and breakers, but its thirty-three sick men had been well treated by the Maoris, who had returned to the ship early on the 29th. On the morning of the 31st the natives were seen dragging into the bush the dinghy which had been sunk, and Surville took an armed party on shore to rescue it. He did not succeed, but in an access of annoyance at what he regarded as naked theft he burnt canoes, huts and fishing nets and seized a chief—who had given food and shelter to the imperilled boat's crew—took him on board and placed him in irons. It was an insensate policy; the ship was in desperate need with its depleted and insufficiently recruited company and lack of fresh stores, its battered rigging, and its loss of anchors and cables—there was only one heavy anchor left; and now the natives had been thoroughly alienated. But where else to go? The New Zealand coast seemed far too much exposed to storms; and the result of a council was the resolve to make for Peru, 1,800 leagues away. At night the Saint Jean Baptiste got out of the bay and early next morning the land was lost to sight. The captive died miserably at sea; his captor was drowned off the Peruvian harbour of Chilca, while attempting to make the shore in a small boat, on 8 April 1770.
Surville therefore had done but dubious service to discovery. We must not deny him the merit, however, of skilful and determined navigation. His earlier passage by way of the Solomons and to the westward of New Caledonia had importance in clarifying the total picture of the Pacific. He preceded Cook on the north-west coast of New Zealand and in his glimpse of the extreme northern coast between Cape Maria van Diemen and Kerr Point, and he left a chart of Doubtless Bay, which Cook had named but not explored. The bay was called the Bay of Lauriston, in honour of Law of Lauriston, the governor of Pondicherry, and one of the enterprising syndicate; the cove where the ship first anchored was named Chevalier Cove, after the other member; Refuge Cove was that where the boat's crew had found shelter, and a cove near by was named Salvation.
Chevalier Cove has been identified as Brodie's Beach, just inside Knuckle Point; Refuge Cove 'as the cove on the west side of the abandoned pa of Rangia-whea, and Salvation Cove as the one on the south side of the old pa.'—McNab, From Tasman to Marsden, p. 45.
Marion du Fresne came next to the northern coast in the succession of discoverers: a Frenchman, like Surville, and like him imprudent, but in a different way—it was a rash excess of trust that trapped Marion. The children of nature were very dirty (thought the French), they were charming, ingenious, childlike, dignified; they were also—and it was unwise to forget the fact—savages. Marion did not deserve his fate; adventurer he was, but also a man of wealth and a willing servant of science. The Chevalier de Bougainville had brought to France a native of Tahiti, who after some experience of Paris, and of the diversions of civilized man, was sent to Mauritius, on one stage of his journey home. Marion offered to return him to Tahiti, in the course of an ambitious voyage of discovery; and in addition to providing his own vessel, the Mascarin, was allowed to hire a royal supply-ship, the Marquis de Castries. The Tahitian died at Madagascar, but Marion, early in 1772, pressed forward on his voyage following the route of Tasman. The results of Cook's first voyage had not yet been published; Marion, it seems, knew nothing of Surville, and had for his guide only Tasman's charts and the published abstract of Tasman's journal.
South of 45°, in January 1772, Marion discovered two small groups of islands; then called at Frederick Henry Bay in Van Diemen's land for repairs, and crossing the intervening sea north of Tasman's route, sighted the snowy peak of Egmont on 25 March. This was at first taken to be an island, and later one of the headlands of Murderers' Bay: Marion called it Mascarin Peak. Tacking off and on till the 29th and taking soundings, he then turned north, passing headlands and indentations, noting the signs of habitation ashore, and looking out for the 'Isles of the Three Kings'. Cape Maria van Diemen was recognized on 3 April, when a violent north-west storm which lasted for three days compelled the ships to make for the open sea.
Coming in with the land again, some days were spent in contrary winds off the Three Kings, where fires and natives were seen, but it was impossible to land; and on 13 April a fine bay was sighted on the 'mainland'. This was probably Spirits Bay; into it, on the 15th, and into a cove a little to the north, a boat was sent to search for water; and here, the following day, the ships cast anchor. The North Cape was called by Marion Cape Eolus: certainly it had good store of winds. There was a little stream in the bay, none too fresh. Before long a tempest was again blowing. The ships, dragging their anchors, were in danger from the rocks off the eastern point of the bay, so that they were forced to get under sail, the Marquis de Castries cutting her cables in the crisis. For a week they tacked about in bad weather, Marion being reluctant to leave five anchors behind him, and on the 26th they were back again, after visiting the second cove—Tom Bowling Bay—and making contact with some friendly savages there. The Mascarin's anchors, being buoyed, were regained, those of the Marquis de Castries, unbuoyed, were sought in vain; and meanwhile the country and the people were examined with interest. Finally abandoning the lost anchors, on the 27th Marion set sail, doubled Cap éole, and on 1 May passed the headland Cook had called Cape Brett and Marion named Square Cape. A great opening was in sight, two armed boats were sent off to reconnoitre, canoes with a crowd of people came alongside, and two chiefs were entertained to dinner. These men were familiar with muskets; evidently Marion had been preceded here at some time by other Europeans. It was a fine bay, as safe, thought the French, as it was beautiful, and Marion decided to enter. He did so on 4 May, the Marquis de Castries very narrowly missing a rock and ending her career forthwith. The ships did not leave this bay—the Bay of Islands—till 13 July; they left with many interesting observations and with a chart; but they left without Marion.
For a few days they were anchored in the harbour called Port Marion, after which, on 11 May, they moved to a spot off one of the largest islands in the bay, Marion Island or Motu-rua, where a camp was pitched for the large number of sick. Up an inlet on the south side of the bay a working party placed another camp, among great trees from which it was to cut out masts. For five weeks the natives, though thievish, manifested great friendliness, and there was full opportunity to observe their customs and the nature of the country. Marion was the object of what he deemed royal honours, and when his officers, their suspicion aroused by rather too pointed attentions, warned him to take care, he rejected all remonstrances. 'How can you expect me to have a bad opinion of a people who show me so much friendship?' he exclaimed.—'As I do only good to them, assuredly they will do me no evil.' Fatal confidence: on 12 June they massacred him at Oraukawa Bay, with two officers and thirteen unarmed sailors, on a visit to a chief who had been among the most friendly, Tacoury or Te Kuri; early the next morning, of a boat's crew of twelve who had gone to get firewood, eleven were cut down, while the last only escaped sorely wounded, to be picked up from the water. Attacks both on the men working at the masts and on the hospital were repelled. The French took sufficiently full vengeance. The pa Marion had gone to visit was taken and fired; two other villages were burned to the ground, and about three hundred natives were shot or were drowned in trying to escape. Nothing was ever seen of the dead Frenchmen but a few of their clothes, vaingloriously paraded by the Maori, and the last bones of cannibal feasting. The kauri masts that had been cut were abandoned, a forge was set up on the Mascarin and spars improvised there; and a month after the massacre a council decided to abandon large plans and make for the Marianne Islands and Manila. A bottle was buried on Marion Island, enclosing a paper declaring the annexation of the country under the name of France-Australe; next day, 13 July, the ships sailed.
We learn enough from tradition to account for this episode; petty thefts on one side, thoughtless retaliation on the other; indignities put upon proud men; unwitting but outrageous infringements of tapu, the desecration of the sacred, as the French, like so many other visitors, strode through the whole fabric of the Maori mind; the blind over-confidence of Marion.
The traditions have been assembled and analysed by the late Leslie G. Kelly in Chapter XI of his Marion Dufresne at the Bay of Islands.
Bloodthirsty on either side, it showed that the New Zealanders, like Europeans, could be cruel and relentless, and established a standard for too much of the future relationship between the races. What else Marion might have done in exploration of New Zealand, or the Pacific, is not to be guessed; and the next French expedition that had contact with New Zealand, that of D'Entrecasteaux in March 1793, made no landing, though it corrected slightly Cook's position for the North Cape.
The map of New Zealand had already by then undergone some real improvement, during the three weeks' stay at Dusky Sound of an English expedition. It was led by one who had been a midshipman with Cook in the Resolution in 1773, and therefore already knew the sound as well as other parts of the coast. This was George Vancouver, whose survey of the north-west coast of America ranks with the work of his master. Vancouver's visit, like the latter ones of Cook, was incidental to his main purpose, which was to make quite complete the investigations of the American coast which Cook had carried out on his third voyage; and entering the Pacific from the west, he put into Dusky as a known and well-charted harbour of refreshment. He had two ships, the Discovery under his own command, and the Chatham under his lieutenant Broughton. Leaving the coast of Van Diemen's Land on 27 October 1791, they shaped a course for New Zealand, where Vancouver had appointed Facile harbour in the sound as the rendezvous—not a very good one as it was to prove. They sighted the coast on 2 November, and standing in towards Five Fingers Point anchored that night inside the sound at the entrance to their harbour. The next day a violent gale fell on them and the Discovery, drifting, was driven nearly outside the sound, though the Chatham managed to maintain her anchorage; the Discovery was taken into Anchor Island harbour and moored to the trees, while her companion moved into Facile harbour on the 5th. The place where the gale was ridden out was called Tempest Road. In the sound the ships remained for three weeks, recruiting the health of the crews and obtaining all necessary supplies, enjoying more than one sporting and botanical expedition, brewing 'spruce beer', and making surveys which rounded out that of Cook. Vancouver charted Anchor Island harbour, and Broughton, Facile harbour; together they worked over the upper arm of the sound, finding that it divided into two branches, each of which ended in a small cove without communication with Doubtful Harbour. Cook's name for this double arm, 'Nobody Knows What', Vancouver corrected to 'Somebody Knows What'—a name which has been further changed to Vancouver Arm and Broughton Arm. The commander had inherited not merely Cook's conscientiousness but his modesty; the 'sketches' he set down, he had 'subjoined to a copy of Captain Cook's most excellent chart of this port, with such trifling additions as in the course of our observations we have been able to make'. Having made them, and completed all other tasks, on 19 November the Chatham left Facile harbour to join her consort, and on the 22nd they departed. They sailed round the south of New Zealand, driven out of land and separated by a storm, but so far following the same course that both on the same day, 23 November, discovered the small group of rocky islets called the Snares. Then sailing north-east, on the 29th Broughton sighted further land. On the beach in the bay that he called Skirmish Bay—Kaingaroa harbour—he had an unfortunate and undesired brush with the natives, in which one of them was killed; and taking possession of the country under the name of Chatham Island, he passed on to join Vancouver at Tahiti. Vancouver himself sailed sixty miles north and out of sight of the group, as Cook had done in March 1777.
Meanwhile, the pace of scientific investigation in the Pacific was quickening. In February 1793, almost coincident with D'Entrecasteaux's visit to New Zealand waters, a Spanish expedition also was briefly on our shores. It was the expedition of two ships, the Descubierta and Altrevida, commanded by an Italian, Alessandro Malaspina; and though it was not important for original discovery, its long voyage about both the northern and the southern parts of the ocean—leaving Cadiz in the summer of 1789 and returning only in September 1794—made it the most important expedition, scientifically, in the history of Spain. Malaspina's primary aim in touching at New Zealand was to repeat at Dusky Bay 'experiments in gravity' already conducted elsewhere; and sailing down from Norfolk Island he sighted Dusky on 25 February 1793. 'A new softness in the air, longer days, and the brilliancy of the stars made these climates much more convenient for navigation than the tropics,' he wrote as he approached the land, and it was the break of an exceedingly fine day that gave him his first sight of New Zealand. Cook's description of the ruggedness of the southern coast was perfect. The day continued fine, but he could not enter Dusky. On the 25th it was more convenient to send a boat into Doubtful Harbour, to explore the possibilities of anchorage and of obtaining wood and water. All these advantages were present; the boat's crew saw a few birds, but 'not a single seal, no shell fish save a few small limpets, and not a sign, however remote, of inhabitants. ... In brief, unless chance or dire necessity bring mariners to this port, we must suppose that it is destined to be perpetually deserted, and that Dusky Bay will ever remain the port of welcome in this neighbourhood, offering as it does a more convenient, a safer, and a healthier refuge.' Yet, with all these attractions, Dusky was inaccessible to Malaspina; during the night he lost position, and next day a violent and increasing gale sprang up from the north-east, putting his two corvettes in considerable danger; while on the 27th, the gale having fallen, a favourable wind was accompanied by dense fog. He was now ninety miles from his harbour, his crew were weakened and tired, even in Dusky rain might postpone his experiments unreasonably, and as he would later be in the same latitude more than once he decided not to take the risk of entering, but to steer west to New Holland for rest and refreshment. Malaspina's voyage, therefore, though interesting, was of no great importance to knowledge of the New Zealand coast, and made even less permanent impression than it deserved. The British Admiralty in 1840 published a chart of Doubtful Harbour by Don Felipe Bauza, the officer in charge of the boat which, not very adequately, explored it; but of the seven Spanish names therein bestowed, and for some time incorporated in other maps of New Zealand, only one— Nea Island—still survives. Bauza, unacquainted with Vancouver's survey, was one of those who thought that Doubtful Harbour
I have used Cook's name consistently in my text: the modern form is of course Doubtful Sound.
might communicate with Dusky Bay.
Already New Zealand had been touched by commerce, and a trade of some importance was in its earliest stages. In November 1792 the first sealing gang had arrived at Dusky. Although moderately successful, it was not followed up till 1803, from which date sealing expeditions were continuous until the 1820's, when the seals had been virtually exterminated. Commercially, indeed, those years were but a cruel and foolish incident in the exploitation of the resources of the Pacific, and they led to bitterly savage relations between traders and the southern Maoris; geographically, nevertheless, they were of no small value. It was sealers who explored that part of the southern coast neglected by Cook, and utilized and made known such harbours as Chalky Inlet and Preservation Inlet. It was sealers who exploited the Antipodes islands, discovered by a naval vessel, the Reliance, homeward bound from Port Jackson in 1800; the Bounty islands, sighted by Bligh in 1788; and the Auckland islands, discovered by the Ocean, one of Enderby's whalers, in 1806; it was a sealing ship, the Perseverance, which in 1810 discovered both Campbell and Macquarie islands, among the richest of sealing grounds; and it was sealers who first made unambiguous the existence of the strait which Cook had been led to deny in the south. Publication of the discovery was certainly made in Sydney in 1809, and the name of Foveaux, the lieutenant-governor of New South Wales, given to it perhaps early in that year; but though it was then mentioned as 'a new discovered Strait', it was certainly known to a minority some years earlier. The honour of effectual discovery and examination lies with Owen F. Smith, an American ship-master, who sketched the strait while searching for seals in 1804, and reported his work to Governor King in 1806.
This statement rests on the existence of a map in the Alexander Turnbull collection, probably a copy, with the legend, 'Sketch of a Strait dividing the southern Island of New Zealand with the harbours on the southernmost Island, discovered and examined by Mr O. F. Smith, an American, when searching for seals in 1804. Communicated by him to Capt. P. G. King, Govr. of N.S.W. March 1806.' It was Smith who, as master of the New York brig Aurora, gave the public the first details of Campbell and Macquarie islands.—See McNab, Murihiku (ed. 1909), pp. 174-6.
Stewart Island, thus clearly marked off, received its name from William Stewart, first mate of the Pegasus,Captain S. Chase, who surveyed the coast in 1809. Stewart was a good surveyor— he later completed the chart of Broughton's Chatham Island; while Chase, it appears, not only circumnavigated Stewart Island, but later, on the same voyage, discovered the true nature of Banks Peninsula, north of which the name Pegasus Bay, like Port Pegasus in Stewart Island, preserves the name of his ship.
2 McNab, op. cit., 159-62. McNab believed, though he gives no authority, that Otago harbour also was first visited as early as 1809.—ibid., 217. The Matilda,Captain Fowler, was certainly there in 1813. It was first charted by Herd in 1826.
Sealing, trading in flax, and after 1830 whaling made European seamen more intimate with the southern shores of the country. In the northern waters, too, whaling had begun at the turn of the century, and Christmas 1814 saw Samuel Marsden inaugurate his mission at Rangihoua, at the Bay of Islands. The first New Zealand Company's emigrant ships reached the country in 1820. and on their way to the Thames Captain Herd visited and charted both Otago harbour, or 'Port Oxley', and Port Nicholson—the Maori Whanga-nui-a-Tara, 'the great harbour of Tara'. Herd, a man of considerable energy, was also the first to visit Port Underwood in Cloudy Bay. Intercourse between Maori and pakeha increased rapidly in the north, and it was the Bay of Islands that was most frequently visited and charted by expeditions of science or of prestige—though Bellingshausen, the Russian, with his ships Mirny and Wostok,visited Queen Charlotte's Sound for a week in 1820, between his two plunges into the Antarctic. To the Bay of Islands came French expeditions in particular—those of Duperrey in the Coquille in April 1824, of Laplace in the Favorite in October 1831, of Cécille in the corvette Héroine in April 1838, and of Dupetit-Thouars in the frigate Vénus in October and November of the same year. To a junior officer on board the Coquille,Jules de Blosseville, who at Sydney ardently collected material relating to New Zealand and published it later in France, we owe a great deal of information on the natives of the south, and on the contributions to geographical knowledge made by the sealers. But of all Frenchmen, it was Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville, Duperrey's second-in-command in 1824, who did the most striking work on our coasts. D'Urville sailed from Toulon in April 1826 in the Coquille, now re-named the Astrolabe, for a long voyage one object of which was to investigate the fate of La Pérouse, the explorer of the Pacific who had been unseen since he left Port Jackson in 1788. The young man who now took up the search was highly sensitive and intelligent, imaginative, thoroughly acquainted with the literature of discovery in the waters for which he was bound; and the volumes in which he published the results of his voyage, together with the many pages of pièces justicatives, or illustrative extracts from previous voyages, provide an enchanting and lucid encyclopaedia of New Zealand to which there was no rival in English. Even over Cook, as an explorer, d'Urville had one advantage—his ear was rather better attuned to Maori speech, and his native place-names and fragments of conversation are rendered with a fidelity and discrimination of which his much-admired predecessor fell short. He was not, of course, a first pioneer of language. He had picked up some Maori from missionary vocabularies, and was armed with the Maori grammar which Professor Lee of Cambridge had published in 1820.
The Astrolabe sailed from Sydney on 19 December 1826. D'Urville's deliberate plan, so far as New Zealand was concerned, was to seek and explore the parts left doubtful by Cook, and he accordingly shaped a course for the Foveaux Strait region, scientifically yet unexamined, although information had been obtained concerning it in 1824. It was under happy auspices, with high hopes, he records, that he and his companions now embarked on the true work of their voyage into the Pacific—hopes which, some of them, were to be deceitful. The weather in the Tasman Sea was so tempestuous that d'Urville thought it wise to abandon the most southern coast; for he had much to do, and time could not be wasted. On 8 January 1827, therefore, in latitude 43°, he turned east-northeast and two days later sighted the land about the mouth of the Grey river. 'Each of us', he writes, 'at the sight of this wild coast, these lofty peaks lashed by the furious winds of the Antarctic sea, rejoiced to have come at last, after so much fatigue, to the object of his desires, on a theatre worthy of his exertions. Proud to follow upon the tracks of Tasman, of Cook, of Marion, we aspired to add to science new information on these countries, still so little known, to study at closer hand the various kingdoms of nature, and above all to observe more scrupulously the curious customs and extraordinary institutions which here give mankind so singular a character.' With such sentiments, from the point of his landfall d'Urville sailed north, past Cape Foulwind where he named the Steeples (les Trois-Clochers), past the flooded Buller river, Rocks Point, and the mouth of the Whanganui Inlet, which he was kept from entering by the breakers on the bar. He followed the land round Cape Farewell in tranquil weather and on the morning of the 14th was off the Spit, beyond which he saw a great basin backed by mountains, the most distant ones clad with snow. A dead calm and a change of current gave him some anxiety, but a favourable breeze springing up he ran round the Spit and across 'Tasman Bay'—across, rather, Murderers' Bay, the first European to break those waters since Tasman himself.
Here d'Urville did not anchor. Cook, he thought, had made Admiralty Bay and Queen Charlotte's Sound well known, and he could best render service by investigating the southern part of Cook's Blind Bay—Tasman Bay. This part was divided from the more northern basin by the jut of land which d'Urville called Pointe de Séparation—Separation Point; and sailing slowly round the coast of Tasman Bay, anchoring at night, on the evening of 16 January he was in the bay he called Astrolabe, on the western coast, which he made his anchorage till the 21st. Already some of his men had landed on Separation Point, and people had come off to the ship from the head of the bay, and now d'Urville looked forward to making real acquaintance with the country. Maori conduct was most praiseworthy; an observatory was set up, the bay charted, plants and birds collected, and d'Urville walked with admiration, with a mixture of feelings scientific and romantic, over the ridges and through the bush he describes so well. On 18 January, gazing from a hill he had laboriously climbed, he saw, not merely below him the picturesque Torrent Bay, but across Tasman Bay on the eastern side a deep opening which made him suspect a passage through to Admiralty Bay; and on the 22nd, after minor expeditions, the Astrolabe left her anchorage to explore this possibility. That night was spent in some uneasiness outside Croisilles Bay (named by d'Urville after his mother's family), in a calm and a heavy swell; next morning he steered for the opening that promised him the desired passage. Late in the afternoon the way was barred by breakers; he was forced to anchor in a dangerous position in mid-channel and spent one of the worst nights of his whole voyage. There now began a five days' struggle with wind and wave, whirlpool and current, anchors and cables, which provides a score of the most exciting pages in d'Urville's narrative. A passage there was— narrowest at the Admiralty Bay end, where a reef barely left room for the ship—and he passed it in a small boat; but to take the ship through was a matter of astonishing difficulty, and even to hold his position was one of great and recurrent danger. At last, on the fifth day and the third attempt, the Astrolabe got through. The wind failed; swung by the current, she touched twice on the reef; but the current itself carried her over, and the breeze freshening again she emerged from the whirlpools and advanced nobly, at full sail, on the calm surface of Admiralty Bay. In her wake floated fragments of her false keel. To the channel thus conquered d'Urville gave the name of Passe des Français—French Pass; to the island thus revealed he gave, at his officers' request, his own name until the native one should be known. The native name is Rangitoto; but d'Urville's name has not perished.
D'Urville sailed on into Cook Strait, past great fires on Cape Koamaru and at the entrance to Tory Channel—lit, he surmised, to attract his attention. He wished to examine Cloudy Bay, thinking it might be connected with Queen Charlotte's Sound, but wind and current once again were hostile to his plan and he was driven to the east as far as Cape Campbell, on 29 January. From hence he steered for the North Island, to explore the coast west of Cape Palliser; he perceived the opening of Port Nicholson, but could not gain entrance, and anchored on the west side of Palliser Bay. Even here, though d'Urville went out in his whaleboat, the surf prevented a landing, and he confesses to lively irritation that he should have access denied him to a singularly interesting coast. He marked the futility of his efforts by calling it Useless Bay—la baie Inutile. But some canoes came out, and two natives insisted on travelling with him as far as Tolaga Bay. From them, as he sailed north, he obtained the names of the principal points on the coast. He could now for some time do no original discovery, but his meetings with the Maori had all the charm and some of the risks of adventure, because with the best intentions it remained difficult to be invariably sure of the difference between commoners and chiefs and greater chiefs, and accord to all the right degree of respect. On 5 February he was off Tolaga Bay, and the wind being from an awkward direction he entered it and occupied Cook's old anchorage. The bay, he found, was more correctly called 'Houa-Houa'—Uawa. As evening came on, the anchor began to drag, and d'Urville, fearing that a second anchor would mean the fouling of cables, made sail. He was reluctant to leave a picturesque part of the country, where the people still practised their primitive customs, hardly as yet influenced by intercourse with Europeans. So far, at a time when such feelings have become possible, have we travelled from the first voyage of Cook!
From Tolaga Bay the Astrolabe passed north to the East Cape. No sooner was she off the Cape, on 7 February, than she encountered a heavy swell, the precursor of storms, which, beginning on the 9th, lasted with but little intermission till a shattering climax a week later. Driven for three days to the north-east, by the 13th d'Urville was back at the Cape, and tempted to give up his careful examination of the coast and to make as soon as possible direct for the Bay of Islands. With a more favourable wind, he pushed on into the Bay of Plenty, between Motuhora or Whale Island and the mainland, anxious, but unable, to rectify Cook's chart where he found it defective. The morning of 16 February dawned with a thick fog, a furious sea and a tempest from the north-east growing every minute in violence—'a frightful disorder of nature', says d'Urville, which reduced him to complete ignorance of his position, aware only that he was in danger from every side. A few minutes before noon the fog lifted and his eyes rested on a reef, no more than a mile away, directly in the course of the ship; to one side was a second reef. He sheered off one danger into another; at the risk of capsizing the ship under a sudden press of canvas— she had been carrying hardly any—he clapped on every sail. The corvette heeled horribly, her gunwale under water and her keel visible as she hung on the precipitous slope of a wave; but she met the test finely. 'At midday precisely' she had doubled the reef; and d'Urville, drawing breath, was even able to admire the vast cascade of water as the waves flung themselves on the line of rocks, and the sheet of blinding spray which rose forty or fifty feet in the air. The fog had lifted barely in time; shortly afterwards he recognized Mayor Island to the northwest, and with the wind and sea falling sensibly, he made all sail possible northward away from further peril. He was not, it was evident, to be allowed to add materially to knowledge of the Bay of Plenty; nor could he even fix accurately the position of the reef that had so nearly proved fatal, a reef to which—Écueils de l'Astrolabe—he gave the name of his ship.
Commander Drury later named Astrolabe Rock, 4 miles from the north end of Motiti island. 'This rock is in such a very different position from that assigned to the Astrolabe reef,' he wrote, 'that were we not convinced that no rocks exist in the position of the Astrolabe, I should have hesitated to give it this name,'—New Zealand Pilot (1856), p. 87, n.
But further north conditions were more favourable; northeast of Mercury Bay he named the D'Haussez group of islands, after the French minister of marine, and sailing outside the Great Barrier Island turned his mind to the necessity of exploration of the Hauraki Gulf. He hoped to come down into the gulf between the Great and the Little Barrier islands, but a south-west squall and a current drove him north to Whangarei, where for parts of the two days 22-23 February he took up anchorage. Here he came again in contact with the native people, and busied himself in collecting their place-names, which he substituted on his map for those of Cook. For much as he revered the memory of that navigator, the English names conferred, with what he thought was dubious taste, on features so fully identified by the sagacious savage, seemed odd. Doubtless, the names given by a first discoverer should be respected, as a sacred duty, where a land was uninhabited; 'but everywhere else, I think, the native ones should prevail as soon as they are known; there will come a time when such names will be the only vestiges of the tongue spoken by the primitive inhabitants'.
As a matter of fact, Cook generally put a native name on a chart when he could.
With such reflections and much excellent information d'Urville set sail again to the south for the investigation of 'Shouraki Bay'. On the 24th he had sailed west of the Little Barrier, and turning south-west came down inside Tiritiri Matangi and Rangitoto into the Waiheke channel. While the ship was slowly beating against a south-west wind next day d'Urville and some of his officers went off in the whaleboat to explore the Waitemata; they landed on both shores, and finally returned exhausted from the tangled swamp that became Auckland's Newmarket. On the 26th he learnt from natives, among many other things, of the existence of the Manukau harbour, and anchoring, sent a band of his companions with an escort of Maoris to examine and report on it—giving them strict instructions to treat the savages with caution and to return by nightfall. D'Urville was mindful of 'too many fatal catastrophes' to feel entirely tranquil over the relations of the two races. But his expedition came back in high spirits from the western side of New Zealand, and he noted the importance of the discovery for any future settlement that might be made in the 'bay of Shouraki'. Early next morning he sailed down the channel with a Maori pilot and entered the gulf between Waiheke and Ponui, sad to leave such pleasant surroundings before he had explored them more attentively. But there was a long voyage ahead. The name Astrolabe Channel was given to the fine expanse of water over which the ship had passed, and d'Urville pardonably assumed the honour of first discovery. He must, however, be deprived of it, excellent as was the chart that he produced. In August 1820 Marsden had gone up the channel from Coromandel, while in August 1820 also the New South Wales government schooner Prince Regent had sailed through, and back again the following month, giving it her own name. Marsden it was, too, who in 1820 first of Europeans examined the Manukau and the Waitemata.
D'Urville sailed down the gulf almost as far as the Thames before changing his direction north close along the Coromandel side, and so, on 2 March, between the Great and the Little Barrier. He aimed to get final refreshment, ere he left the coast of New Zealand, at the Bay of Islands; but, good Frenchman as he was, he was anxious to reach the North Cape, so that his chart might meet the limit of the land gazed upon by his countryman D'Entrecasteaux. This he did, without further adventure ashore, and on 12 March he entered the Bay. It was a harbour that he knew; he was met by an old friend, the missionary Henry Williams, and while his sailors were at work or amusement after their own kind, d'Urville pursued his researches into native life or visited the great groves of kauri and kahikatea. Cabbages and turnips grew where Marion had set up his hospital, on the island of 'Motou-Doua'; of that tragedy there remained in the Bay only a tendency to blame it on to the people of Whangaroa, and for the tribe of Marion all was now peace. At last, on 18 March, the women who had taken up their residence in the ship were prevailed upon to go, not without tears, and the Astrolabe set sail for the islands of more tropical seas, for Tonga and Fiji, for New Guinea and the East Indies. Her work on the coast of New Zealand had been arduous and more than once menaced with disaster; but it had, reflected d'Urville, been of no little merit. A great part of the coast had been laid down in the greatest detail, and in the most scrupulous manner. 'Henceforth geography will not be able to discuss these great islands of the south without recalling the labours and discoveries of the Astrolabe. What perils, what privations are those that such a result does not commit to oblivion?'
There was still work to do, and work arduous enough, in the addition of precise knowledge to what was already, with relative fullness, known of the New Zealand coast. D'Urville himself paid a third visit to the country in 1840, sailing up the eastern side of the South Island and visiting Otago and Akaroa before becoming a somewhat censorious witness of British activities at the Bay of Islands. The glory had departed—whalers and traders had debased the free and noble savages of the past to impudence and mendicancy. Such men, indeed, could still play some part in discovery. It was a whaler, John Guard, famous in his day, who in September 1838 piloted the naval vessel Pelorus into a 'river' between Queen Charlotte's Sound and Admiralty Bay, where his own ship had once sheltered from a gale of wind; and so enabled Lieutenant Chetwode to explore the inlet which he called Pelorus Sound. But the close of the third decade of the century may be said to mark a period. By then, accident, or the odd visitor, like the comprehensive voyage round the world, could contribute little to the geography of our country—the time had come for the detailed surveys which Stokes of the Acheron and Drury of the Pandora carried out between 1848 and 1855, the permanent basis of the Admiralty charts of our country. In 1856 the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty published the first edition of the New Zealand Pilot.
Thus was New Zealand discovered to the world; and revealed, lay waiting for what history might enact behind its shores. Rock-founded in the far ocean, on the perimeter of things, yet, as western man stretched out his eager arms, it came within his reach and in his inevitable power. For it is of the nature of man ever to wander and to take. As from Hawaiki, that ancient homeland, Kupe, Whatonga and Toi had sailed, and the Maori, driven by war to seek elsewhere his bread, had gone down to the sea and found safety on the stern breast of Kiwa; so had other men, for trade, for curiosity, for the means of living, embraced that dangerous goddess. And while discovery was still pressed onward, trade had begun to return its profit, not from gold and silver, but from the seal and the whale, the flax and the timber of a savage land; before curiosity had made all her own, settlement, a new fashion of life, new desires and affections, a new polity, had begun to widen their swift influence. No way of life is stable; only the land is stable, within our brief sight, for men to find and find again. So with New Zealand. Tasman, Cook, Marion, d'Urville—the roll of its discoverers was not ignoble, and it might be that a not ignoble destiny waited for those narrow islands in the vast Pacific, so remote, so interesting to the philosopher and the student of mankind. M. Dumont d'Urville at least, the intellectual among their number, prone to romantic speculation, romantic perhaps even in his devotion to science, to whose heart sprang the memory of his immortal predecessors and to whose lips the words of Roman poets—M. d'Urville was not reluctant to prophesy. There would come a day, he affirmed, as such a day had come to Gauls and Britons, when savages would rise to civilization and empire. 'Then these shores, desert or peopled only by isolated pas, will exhibit flourishing cities; these silent bays, traversed now by infrequent frail canoes, will be furrowed by ships of every size. And in a few centuries, if the printing-press were not henceforth to maintain by its indestructible agency the facts and the discoveries of our modern time, future academicians of New Zealand would not fail to cast in doubt, or at least laboriously to discuss, the narratives of the first navigators—reading therein of the waste spaces, the barbarians of their fatherland, and of the total absence in this country of all animals useful to mankind.'
Such the elegant disquisition of philosophy; yet philosophy, it may be, might take an even wider sweep of vision and brood thereon, looking in the course of mortality beyond cities and ships and academies, beyond the life of men to a more infinite future—to where, millennia blotted out, all in the past is one and gone, and over a land restored to itself hangs a sky unseen of human kind, supported by peaks whose whiteness dazzles no eye; where the green bush once more advances to the sea and giant trees pillar the obscurity of their own leaves; where thunderous waves break forever on a long and untrodden shore; a land of unheard musical torrents, of bays and sounds returned to quietude, reflecting only the shape of their own hills, the colour of blossom ageless and unnamed, the stars by which no navigators sail.
Appendixes
A. Cook on His Chart
[Journals of Captain James Cook, I, pp. 274-6]
'The Northermost of these Islands, as I have before Observed is call'd by the Natives Aehei no mouwe and the Southermost Tovy Poenammu, the former name we were well assurd comprehended the whole of the Northern Island, but we were not so well satisfied with the latter whether it comprehended the whole of the Southern Island or only a part of it. This last according to the accounts of the Natives of Queen Charlottes Sound ought to consist of two Islands one of which at least we were to have saild round in a few days, but this was not verify[ed] by our own observations. I am inclinable to think that they know'd no more of this land than what came within the limets of their sight. The Chart which I have drawn will best point out the figure and extent of these Islands, the situation of the Bays and harbours they contain and the lesser Islands [that] lay about them. And now I have mentioned the Chart I shall point out such places as are drawn with sufficient accuracy to be depended upon and such as are not, begining at Cape Pallisser and proceed round Aehei no mouwe by the East Cape &ca. The Coast between these two Capes I believe to be laid down pretty accurate both in its figure and the Course and distance from point to point. The oppertunities I had and the methods I made use on to obtain these requesites were such as could hardly admit of an error; from the East Cape to Cape Maria Vandiemen altho it cannot be perfectly true yet it is without any very material error, some few places however must be excepted and these are very doubtfull and are not only here but in every other part of the chart pointed out by a prick'd or broken line. From Cape Maria Vandiemen up as high as the Latitude of 36° 15' we seldom were nearer the Shore than from 5 to 8 Leagues and therefore the line of the Sea Coast may in some places be erroneous; from the above latitude to nearly the length of Entry Island we run along and near the shore all the way and no circumstance occur'd that made me liable to commit any material error. Excepting Cape Teerawhitte we never came near the shore between Entry Island and Cape Pallisser and therefore this part of the Coast may be found to differ something from the truth. In short I believe that this Island will never be found to differ materially from the figure I have given it and that the coast affords few or no harbours but what are either taken notice of in this Journal or in some measure point[ed] out in the Chart; but I cannot say so much for Tovy-poenammu, the season of the year and circumstance of the Voyage would not permit me to spend so much time about this Island as I had done at the other and the blowing weather we frequently met with made it both dangerous and difficult to keep upon the Coast. However I shall point out the places that may be erroneous in this as I have done in the other. From Queen Charlottes Sound to Cape Campbel and as far to the S.W. as the Latitude 43° will be found to be pretty accurate, between this Latitude and the Latitude 44° 20' the coast is very doubtfully discribed, a part of which we hardly if att all saw. From this last mentioned Latitude to Cape Saunders we were generally at too great a distance to be particular and the weather at the same time was unfavourable. The Coast as it is laid down from Cape Saunders to Cape South and even to Cape West is no doubt in many places very erroneous as we hardly ever were able to keep near the shore and were some times blowen off altogether. From the West Cape down to Cape Fare-well and even to Queen Charlottes Sound will in most places be found to differ not much from the truth.'
B. The Account of Cook's Visit By Te Horeta Taniwha
[White, Ancient History of the Maori, Vol. V, pp. 121-8. The version of these Maori reminiscences printed by White is the longest and the fullest, though the story was first taken down at Lieutenant-Governor Wynyard's direction at Coromandel during the gold-field negotiations with the natives in 1852. White gives the chief's name as Hore-ta-te-Taniwha; perhaps strictly it should be Te Horeta te Taniwha. Heaphy, the gold-field warden, who printed in Chapman's New Zealand Magazine (1862), pp. 4-7, a briefer version, calls him simply Taniwha. He was more familiarly known to the pakeha diggers as 'Old Hooknose'. Scholefield, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, has a short article on his career.
I have omitted White's parenthetical explanatory words where they do not seem called for, and one passage on later European ships in the neighbourhood. It should be noted that he uses the word 'mat' where we should say, more properly, 'cloak'.]
'In the days long past, when I was a very little boy, a vessel came to Whitianga. Our tribe was living there at that time. We did not live there as our permanent home, but were there according to our custom of living for some time on each of our blocks of land, to keep our claim to each, and that our fire might be kept alight on each block, so that it might not be taken from us by some other tribe.
This accounts for the absence of permanent habitations near Cook's anchorage commented upon by him.
'We lived at Whitianga, and a vessel came there, and when our old men saw the ship they said it was a tupua, a god,
White supplies the parenthetical gloss, 'some unknown thing'. Tupua is defined in the latest edition of h w Williams's Maori dictionary as (inter alia) 'Goblin, demon, object of terror'; and, as an adjective, 'strange'.
and the people on board were strange beings. The ship came to anchor, and the boats pulled on shore. As our old men looked at the manner in which they came on shore, the rowers pulling with their backs to the bows of the boat, the old people said, "Yes, it is so: these people are goblins; their eyes are at the back of their heads; they pull on shore with their backs to the land to which they are going." When these goblins came on shore we (the children and women) took notice of them, but we ran away from them into the forest, and the warriors alone stayed in the presence of those goblins; but, as the goblins stayed some time, and did not do any evil to our braves, we came back one by one, and gazed at them, and we stroked their garments with our hands, and we were pleased with the whiteness of their skins and the blue eyes of some of them.
'These goblins began to gather oysters, and we gave some kumara, fish, and fern-root to them. These they accepted, and we (the women and children) began to roast cockles for them; and as we saw that these goblins were eating kumara, fish, and cockles, we were startled, and said, "Perhaps they are not goblins like the Maori goblins." These goblins went into the forest, and also climbed up the hill to our pa at Whitianga. They collected grasses from the cliffs, and kept knocking at the stones on the beach, and we said, "Why are these acts done by these goblins?" We and the women gathered stones and grass of all sorts, and gave to these goblins. Some of the stones they liked, and put them into their bags, the rest they threw away; and when we gave them the grass and branches of trees they stood and talked to us, or they uttered the words of their language. Perhaps they were asking questions, and, as we did not know their language, we laughed, and these goblins also laughed, so we were pleased. The warriors and old men of our tribe sat in silence and gazed at these goblins. So these goblins ate the food we had presented to them, with some relish they had brought on shore with them, and then we went up the Whitianga River with them. Now, some of the goblins had walking-sticks which they carried about with them, and when we arrived at the bare dead trees where the shags roost at night and have their nests, the goblins lifted the walking-sticks up and pointed them at the birds, and in a short time thunder was heard to crash and a flash of lightning was seen, and a shag fell from the trees; and we children were terrified, and fled, and rushed into the forest, and left the goblins all alone. They laughed, and waved their hands to us, and in a short time the bravest of us went back to where the goblins were, and handled the bird, and saw that it was dead. But what had killed it? Our old people waited in suspicion, and went back to the settlement, as also did the goblins. We were now at quiet and peace with them, and they gave us some of the food they had brought on shore with them. Some of this food was very hard, but it was sweet. Some of our old people said it was punga-punga
Pumice-stone. It was ship's biscuit, or 'bread'.
from the land from which these goblins came. They gave us some fat food, which the same old people of our tribe said was the flesh of whales; but the saltness of this food nipped our throats, and we did not care for such fat food.
'After the ship had been lying at anchor some time, some of our warriors went on board, and saw many things there. When they came on shore, they gave our people an account of what they had seen. This made many of us desirous to go and see the home of the goblins. I went with the others; but I was a very little fellow in those days, so some of us boys went in the company of the warriors. Some of my playmates were afraid, and stayed on shore. When we got on board the ship we were welcomed by the goblins, whom our warriors answered in our language. We sat on the deck of the ship, where we were looked at by the goblins, who with their hands stroked our mats and the hair of the heads of us children; at the same time they made much gabbling noise in talking, which we thought was questions regarding our mats and the sharks' teeth we wore in our ears, and the hei-tiki we wore suspended on our chests; but as we could not understand them we laughed, and they laughed also. They held some garments up and showed them to us, touching ours at the same time; so we gave our mats for their mats, to which some of our warriors said "Ka pai", which words were repeated by some of the goblins, at which we laughed, and were joined in the laugh by the goblins.
'There was one supreme man in that ship. We knew that he was the lord of the whole by his perfect gentlemanly and noble demeanour. He seldom spoke, but some of the goblins spoke much. But this man did not utter many words: all that he did was to handle our mats and hold our mere, spears, and wahaika,
The wahaika, like the mere, was a short striking weapon of the patu class.
and touch the hair of our heads. He was a very good man, and came to us—the children—and patted our cheeks, and gently touched our heads. His language was a hissing sound, and the words he spoke were not understood by us in the least. We had not been long on board the ship before this lord of these goblins made a speech, and took some charcoal and made marks on the deck of the ship, and pointed to the shore and looked at our warriors. One of our aged men said to our people, "He is asking for an outline of this land"; and that old man stood up, took the charcoal, and marked the outline of Te Ika-a-Maui. And the old chief spoke to that chief goblin, and explained the chart he had drawn. The other goblins and our people sat still and looked at the two who were engaged with the chart marked with charcoal on the deck. After some time the chief goblin took some white stuff, on which he made a copy of what the old chief had made on the deck, and then spoke to the old chief. The old chief explained the situation of the Reinga
Te Reinga, a rocky promontory near the North Cape whence departed spirits leapt into the ocean on their path to the underworld; sometimes the abode of the spirits itself.
at the North Cape; but, as the goblin chief did not appear to understand, the old chief lay down on the deck as if dead, and then pointed to the Reinga as drawn by him in the plan. But the goblin chief turned and spoke to his companions, and, after they had talked for some time, they all looked at the map which the old chief had drawn on the deck; but the goblins did not appear to understand anything about the world of spirits spoken of by the old chief, so they scattered about the deck of the ship.
This episode of the chart is not mentioned by Cook or Banks, and it seems extremely unlikely that it happened. It was not the sort of thing that Cook could have passed by without remark.
'I and my two boy-companions did not walk about on board of the ship—we were afraid lest we should be bewitched by the goblins; and we sat still and looked at everything we saw at the home of these goblins. When the chief goblin had been away in that part of their ship which he occupied, he came up on deck again and came to where I and my two boy-companions were, and patted our heads with his hand, and he put his hand out towards me and spoke to us at the same time, holding a nail out towards us. My companions were afraid, and sat in silence; but I laughed, and he gave the nail to me. I took it into my hand and said "Ka pai" ["very good"], and he repeated my words, and again patted our heads with his hand, and went away. My companions said, "This is the leader of the ship, which is proved by his kindness to us; and also he is so very fond of children. A noble man—one of noble birth—cannot be lost in a crowd." I took my nail, and kept it with great care, and carried it with me wherever I went, and made it fit to the point of my spear, and also used it to make holes in the side-boards of canoes, to bind them on to the canoe. I kept this nail till one day I was in a canoe and she capsized in the sea, and my god
i.e. the nail.
was lost to me.
'The goblin chief took some of his own things and went with them to our old chief, and gave him two handfuls of what we now know were seed-potatoes. At that time we thought they were parareka,
The large horse-shoe fern, Marattia salicina, cultivated for its starchy rhizome, which was eaten.
and we called them by this name, as the things he gave to the old man were not unlike the bulb of the parareka, or like the lower end of that fern, at the part where it holds to the stem of the fern-tree. The old chief took the gift and planted it, and we have partaken of potatoes every year since that time. These things were first planted at a place in the Wairoa called the Hunua, half-way between Drury and the Taupo settlement, east of the entrance of the river Wairoa, opposite the island of Waiheke; and the old chief to whom the potatoes were given was of the Nga-ti-pou tribe, who occupied the Drury district at that time.
'After these parareka had been planted for three years, and there was a good quantity of them, a feast was given, at which some of the potatoes were eaten, and then a general distribution of seed parareka was made amongst the tribes of Waikato and Hauraki.
'The Nga-puhi tribes say they had the potato before any other tribes of New Zealand. This assertion is a fiction: we, the tribes of the Thames, first had potatoes, as we can show that even at this day the potato grows of its own accord in the Hunua district, from the fact that in the days of old the pa at the Hunua was attacked by a war-party, the pa was taken, all the people killed and eaten, their bones were broken and knocked like nails into the posts of the storehouses at their own home, and the place was sacred for a long time, not any one daring to go there, and was quite forsaken for years, but potatoes continued to grow there of their own accord on the banks of the streams, where the soil is carried by the freshes in the creeks, and potatoes are to be obtained there at this day. . . .
'One of our tribe was killed by the goblins who first came to Whitianga. We—that is, our people—went again and again to that ship to sell fish, or mats, or anything that we Maori had to sell; and one day one of our canoes, in which were nine persons, paddled off to the ship; but one of that nine was a noted thief,
The name of this man, we learn from Heaphy's version, was Marutu-ahu. 'He was a great thief; his name was a proverb from his thieving. A young man who stole was called the son of Marutu-ahu.'
and this man took a dogskin mat to sell to the goblins. There were five of them at the stern of the canoe and four in the bow, and this thief was with those in the stern. When they got alongside of the ship, the goblin who collected shells, flowers, tree-blossoms, and stones was looking over the side.
Obviously Banks is meant, and has here been confused with Gore (see p. 34 above). It is the main blot on Te Horeta Taniwha's reminiscences; but probably arises from Banks's prominence among the pakeha.
He held up the end of a garment which he would give in exchange for the dogskin mat belonging to this noted thief; so the thief waved with his hand to the goblin to let some of it down into the canoe, which the goblin did; and, as the goblin let some of it down into the canoe the thief kept pulling it towards him. When the thief had got a long length of the goblin's garment before him, the goblin cut his garment, and beckoned with his hand to the man to give the dogskin mat up to him; but the thief did not utter a word, and began to fold up the dogskin mat with the goblin's garment into one bundle, and told his companions to paddle to the shore. 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 with it at the canoe which was paddling away. Thunder pealed and lightning flashed, but those in the canoe paddled on. When they landed eight rose to leave the canoe, but the thief sat still with his dogskin mat and the garment of the goblin under his feet. His companions called to him, but he did not answer. One of them went and 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. He was carried to the settlement and a meeting of the people called to consult on the matter, at which his companions told the tale of the theft of the goblin's garment; and the people said, "He was the cause of his own death, and it will not be right to avenge him. All the payment he will obtain for his death will be the goblin's garment which he has stolen, which shall be left to bind around his body where it is laid." His body was taken and put into one of the ancient cave burial-places. Not any evil came from this death, and we again went to barter with the goblins of that ship, and the goblins came again and again on shore, nor was there one evil word spoken, or any act of transgression on our part for that death.'
Notes on the Sources
Reference has been made in the text to the general historical conditions, and the state of geographical knowledge at different periods, determining the process by which New Zealand was discovered. For a fuller discussion of these I may perhaps mention my Exploration of the Pacific (2nd ed., London, 1947); or the General Introduction to The Journals of Captain James Cook, Vol. I, The Voyage of the Endeavour (Cambridge, 1955).
1. The Polynesians
The best popular general account of the wanderings of the Polynesian race is by Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), Vikings of the Sunrise (New York, 1938; Christchurch, 1954); Book I of the same author's Coming of the Maori (Wellington, 1949) gives the traditional account with moderation and great learning. S. Percy Smith's Hawaiki (4th ed., Auckland, 1921) has considerable importance in the history of Polynesian scholarship, but is now in some respects out of date. Elsdon Best, in his 'Maori Voyagers and their Vessels', in Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, Vol. XLVIII (1916), pp. 447-63, gives a fascinating account, touched with his usual poetry, of the material means of Maori navigation; his Land of Tara (New Plymouth, 1919) will be found interesting for its account of Kupe and other voyagers at Port Nicholson. The Introduction to Dr. Roger Duff's Moa-Hunter Period of Maori Culture (2nd ed., Wellington, 1956) is a very useful summary. For the most recent consideration of Polynesian navigation and its possibilities in discovery, Andrew Sharp's Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific (Wellington, 1956; Pelican, 1959) must be read.
2. Tasman
Too much on Tasman is out of print. The leading authority in English is the folio edition of his Journal by J. E. Heeres (Amsterdam, 1898), difficult to find outside libraries. More conveniently handled is Robert McNab's Historical Records of New Zealand, Vol. II (Wellington, 1914), pp. 1-38 of which print documents and extracts from journals. There is a later, and better, translation of the New Zealand portion of Tasman's journal by M. F. Vigeveno in Abel Janszoon Tasman and the Discovery of New Zealand (Wellington, 1942). McNab's accounts in his Murihiku (Wellington, 1909) and From Tasman to Marsden (Dunedin, 1914) are useful. E. H. McCormick's Tasman and New Zealand (Wellington, 1959) is a masterly analysis of the process by which Tasman's own account was transmitted to the world, and incidentally helps in disentangling what actually happened in New Zealand.
3. Cook
On Cook the best writer is Cook. His own accounts of his voyages have been published by the Hakluyt Society, edited by the present writer: The Journals of Captain James Cook, Vol. I, The Voyage of the Endeavour (Cambridge, 1955); Vol. II, The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure (Cambridge, 1960). A third volume is in preparation for his third voyage. Banks's whole journal of the first voyage has never been published, except in a much shortened and garbled version by Sir Joseph D. Hooker (London, 1896), now out of print; a full edition, edited from the original MS in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, is now to appear. The New Zealand portion, however, has been well edited from an MS copy in the Alexander Turnbull Library by Professor W. P. Morrell, under the title Sir Joseph Banks in New Zealand (Wellington, 1958). For the first voyage Sydney Parkinson's Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas (London, 1773) adds some interesting details. The material in McNab's Historical Records, Vol. II, pp. 44 ff., bears on all three voyages, and is most valuable. A good discussion of the first landing is that by W. L. Williams, 'On the Visit of Captain Cook to Poverty Bay and Tolaga Bay', Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XXI (1889), pp. 389-97; while J. A. Mackay's Historic Poverty Bay (Gisborne, 1949), Chaps. III-VII, is detailed as well as good. The account of the visit to Mercury Bay given by Te Horeta Taniwha is printed in John White's Ancient History of the Maori, Vol. V (Wellington, 1888), pp. 121-8; a shorter account is given in the same volume, pp. 128-30. The Endeavour is vividly and charmingly described in G. Arnold Wood's The Voyage of the Endeavour (Melbourne, 1926).
Of the eighteenth-century editions of Cook, two out of the three volumes of Hawkesworth's Voyages (London, 1773) are devoted to the first voyage, and can still be read with interest, though they are more Banks than Cook; they have been reprinted and adapted innumerable times. The Voyage towards the South Pole and Round the World (2 vols., London, 1777) sticks much more closely to Cook's words than anything else over his name. The interest of A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean . . . for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere (3 vols., London, 1784) is great, but not, so far as New Zealand is concerned, one of discovery.
The New Zealand portions of Cook's journals—for the first voyage, from Wharton's imperfect edition of 1893, now long out of print; for the others, from the eighteenth-century texts—have been brought together in A. H. and A. W. Reed's Captain Cook in New Zealand (Wellington, 1951).
4. Cook to D'Urville
McNab may be again recommended, in Murihiku for the South Island, From Tasman to Marsden for the North, and Vol. II of the Historical Records for both.
Surville: Surville's own journal has never been published, and we know the voyage mainly from the journals written by P. Monneron, supercargo of the Saint Jean Baptiste {Hist. Rec., II, pp. 213-295) and Pottier de l'Horne, first lieutenant of the ship (ibid., pp. 296-347). The Abbé Rochon, in his Nouveau Voyage à la Mer du Sud (Paris, 1783), gives an account of the voyage based on Monneron and parts of Surville's journal. Other accounts are simply derived from these.
Marion Du Fresne: The journal of Roux, lieutenant on the Mascarin, is printed in French and English in Hist. Rec., II, pp. 350-443; followed by that of Captain du Clesmeur, of the Marquis de Castries (pp. 444-81). Rochon's Nouveau Voyage is in the main an account of this expedition, derived from the journal of Crozet, who took command after Marion's death. There was apparently some feeling between the officers, to judge from references in their journals. There is an English translation of Rochon (omitting the abstract of Surville's voyage) by H. Ling Roth, under the title of Crozet's Voyage to Tasmania, New Zealand, &c. (London, 1891); and Leslie G. Kelly co-ordinated all the material in his careful study, Marion Dufresne at the Bay of Islands (Wellington, 1951).
Vancouver: The standard account is Vancouver's A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean (London, 1798), of which Vol. I, pp. 58-97, are devoted to New Zealand. In Hist. Rec., II, pp. 483-95, is an exceedingly interesting extract from the journal of Archibald Menzies, the surgeon of the Discovery; and ibid., pp. 496-508, an extract from a Chatham journal, probably written by Edward Bell, the ship's clerk, the original of which is in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
Malaspina:Murihiku, pp. 100-10, and Hist. Rec., II, pp. 162-5, have a translation of the relevant pages of the Spanish Viaje de las Corbetas Descubierta y Altrevida (Madrid, 1885), to which the Spanish-reading student may be referred; a copy is in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
The work of the sealers, etc., is discussed at length in Murihiku. Of the French in New Zealand waters there is a very pleasant brief account in Dr. T. M. Hocken's article, 'Early Visits of the French to New Zealand', in Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. XL (1908), PP. 137-53.
D'urville: The second volume of the Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe (Paris, 1830) is a full and charming account by d'Urville himself. The greater part of this is translated, most conveniently, in Olive Wright's New Zealand 1826-1827 (Wellington, 1950), which has a useful biographical introduction. There are also rather stiff translations of considerable extracts by S. Percy Smith in Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vols. XL-XLII (1908-1910), with very valuable notes on places and persons mentioned. The atlas and plates published with the French volumes are magnificent.
IndexAcheron,84Admiralty Bay, 19, 57, 78, 79, 84Adventure,62, 64, 65, 66 n.Ahuriri, Bluff and Port, 30Akaroa Harbour, 52 n., 83Albatross Point, 43Anaura Bay, 30Anchor Island, 63, 73Aotea, canoe, 7, 8Te Arawa, canoe, 7, 8Aropawa Island, 4, 50Te Aru-tanga-nuku, 2Astrolabe,77, 79, 80, 83Astrolabe Bay, 78Astrolabe Reef, 81Auckland, 8, 37, 82Auckland Islands, 75Banks, Joseph, viii, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31 n., 32, 34, 35. 37, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55 n., 56, 59, 61, 66, 91 n., 93 n.Banks Peninsula, 52, 59, 76Bauza, Don Felipe, 75Barrier Islands, 38, 81, 82, 83Bay of Islands, 40, 41, 60, 71, 76, 77, 80, 83, 84Bay of Plenty, 5, 32, 80, 81Bayly, William, 66 n.Bellingshausen, 76–77Blaeu, Willem, 23Bligh, William, 75Blind Bay, 58, 78de Blosseville, Jules, 77Blumine Island, 48Bougainville, Chevalier de, 66, 69Bounty Islands, 75Breaksea Sound, 64Bream Bay, 38Brett, Cape, 38, 42, 70Brett, Sir Piercey, 38Brothers, the, 50Broughton, Lieutenant William, 72, 73, 76Brouwer, Hendrik, 23Buller River, 78Burney, Admiral, 11Camel, Mount, 41Campbell, Cape, 51, 80, 88Campbell Islands, 75, 76 n.Cascade Point, 56Castle Point, 51Cavalli Islands, 38, 39, 40Cécille, Captain, 77Chalky Inlet, 63, 75Chase, Captain S., 76Chatham,72, 73Chatham Island, 73, 76Chetwode, Lieutenant, 84Clerke, Lieutenant, 64Cloudy Bay, 76, 79Colenso, Rev. William, viiiColville, Cape, 36, 37Cook, Captain James, viii, 2, 24–66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82 n., 84, 87–88, 89 n., 91 n.; his circumnavigation of North Island, 26–44, 51; South Island, 50–57, 59; Stewart Island, 54–55, 59; second voyage, 62–66; third voyage, 72Cook Strait, 4, 19, 20, 23, 47–51, 64, 65, 79Coromandel, 38, 82, 83, 88Court of Aldermen, the, 32Croisilles Bay, 79D'Entrecasteaux, A.-R.-J. de Bruni Chevalier, 72, 74, 83D'Haussez Islands, 81van Diemen, Anthony, 11, 12, 13, 23Discovery,72, 73Doubtful Harbour, 56, 63, 73, 74, 75Doubtless Bay, 40, 67, 69Drury, Commander, 81 n., 84Duperrey, Captain, 77Dupetit-Thouars, 77D'Urville Island, 19, 79Dusky Bay [Sound], 55, 62, 63–64, 72, 74, 75East Cape, 31, 80, 87Edgcumbe, Mount, 32Egmont, Cape and Mount, 20, 43, 44, 70Egmont, Earl of, 43Endeavour,3, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 41, 42, 44, 49, 53, 56, 58; design, 25; in danger, 40, 51; capabilities, 40, 43 n.; repairs, 45Enderby, 75Facile Harbour, 72, 73Farewell, Cape, 17, 56, 57, 58, 78, 88Five Fingers Point, 55, 72'Fleet', the, vii, 7–8Foulwind, Cape, 16, 56, 78Foveaux, Lieutenant-Governor, 75Foveaux Strait, 4, 54 n., 55, 75, 77Fowler, Captain, 76 n.French East India Company, 66French Pass, 79Furneaux, Tobias, 62, 65Gable End Foreland, 30Gannet Island, 43George III, 36, 49Gisborne, 8Goose Cove, 64Gore, Lieutenant John, 34, 52, 53, 93 n.Green, Charles, 27, 31, 33, 34Grey River, 78Guard, John, 84Hauraki Gulf, 81Hawaiki, 2, 7, 9, 84Hawke's Bay, 5, 8, 30Heaphy, Charles, 88, 93 n.Heemskerck,13–14, 17, 18Hen and Chickens, 38Herd, Captain James, 76Hicks, Lieutenant Zachary, 31, 34, 37, 39, 45, 55 n.Hicks's Bay, 31Hokianga Harbour, 5, 43, 67Holman, Yde T'jercxszoon, 14Te Horeta Taniwha, 35–36, 88–93Horouta, canoe, 7, 8Hui-te-Rangiora, 2Te Iwi-o-Atea, canoe, 2Jackson, Point, 49, 57Jacobsz, Francoys, 14Jansz, Gerrit, 14, 18, 21Kaikoura Peninsula, 52Kaingaroa Harbour, 73Kaipara Harbour, 43Kapiti [Entry Island], 4, 44, 87Karioi, Mount, 20Kawhia Harbour, 43Kelly, Leslie G., 72 n.Kerr Point, 67, 69Kidnappers, Cape, 30, 51King, Governor P. G., 76Knuckle Point, 40, 69 n.Koamaru, Cape, 50, 79Kupe, 1, 2, 4–5, 6, 7, 8, 61, 84Kurahaupo, canoe, 7, 8, Te Kuri, 71La Pérouse, J. F. de G., 77Laplace, Captain, 77Lee, Professor Samuel, 77Macquarie Islands, 75, 76 n.'Mac's Passage', 63le Maire, Jacob, 12–13, 19 n., 21Malaspina, Alessandro, 74–75Mana Island, 4, 65Manukau Harbour, 8, 82, 83Maori race, origins, vii, 2, 61Maori voyages, vii, 1–9, 61Maria van Diemen, Cape, 23, 42, 43, 67, 69, 70, 87Marion du Fresne, viii, 69–72, 78, 83, 84Marsden, Samuel, 69 n., 76, 82, 83Marutu-ahu, 93 n.Mascarin Peak, 70Mata-atua, canoe, 7, 8Matahorua, canoe, 4Maui, 1, 2, 50Mayor Island, 32, 81McClymont, W. G., viiMcNab, Robert, 69 n., 76 n.,Mendaña, Alvaro de, 12Mercury Bay, 33, 35, 46, 81Mistaken Bay, 56Molineux's Harbour, 54 n.Motuara Island, 49, 50Motu Arohia Island, 39Motu-rua Island, 39, 70Murderers' [Golden] Bay, 19, 23, 47, 58, 70, 78Nea Island, 75New Zealand Company, 76Ngahue, 4,North Cape, 4, 6, 41, 67, 70, 72, 83, 91Oraukawa Bay, 71Otago Harbour, 76, 83Palliser Bay, 4, 80Palliser, Cape, 51, 65, 80, 87Palliser, Sir Hugh, 51Pandora,84Parkinson, Sydney, 55, 58Pelorus Sound, 84Pickersgill Harbour, 63, 64Pickersgill Island, 48Pickersgill, Lieutenant Richard, 50 n., 63, 64Poor Knights, the, 38Porirua Harbour, 4Portland, Isle of, 29, 30Port Nicholson, viii, 4, 8, 51, 65, 76, 80Port Underwood, 76Poverty Bay, 29Pre-Maori inhabitants of New Zealand, 5, 6Preservation Inlet, 75Prince Regent,82Purangi River, 33Queen Charlotte Sound, 49, 51, 52, 57, 60, 62, 65, 66, 76, 78, 79, 84, 87, 88Quiros, Pedro Fernandez de, 12Rangaunu Bay, 41, 67Te Reinga, 91Resolution,62, 63, 64, 65, 72Resolution Island, 64Rocks Point, 56, 78Ruahini Mountains, 30Ruapuke Island, 54 n.Runaway, Cape, 8, 31Sandy Bay, 41, 67Saunders, Cape, 53, 88Scholefield, G. H., 88Schouten, the Hon. Justus, 14Schouten, Willem, 12–13, 19 n., 21Sealers and whalers, viii, 62, 64, 75, 76, 77, 84Separation Point, 58 n., 78Sharp, Andrew, viiShip Cove, 44–47, 64, 66Sinclair Head, 4Smith, Owen F., 76Smith, S. Percy, 2 n.Snares, the, 73Solander, Dr. Daniel, 25, 26, 30, 31 n., 37, 39, 45, 47, 48, 59Solander's Isle, 54South Cape, 54, 88Steeples, the, 78Stephens Island, 49, 56, 57Stewart Island, 59, 76Stewart, William, 76Stokes, Captain, 84de Surville, Jean François, viii, 66–69Table Cape, 29, 30, 64Tainui, canoe, 7, 8Takitimu, canoe, 7, 8Tapuaenuku, Mount, 51Tasman, Abel Janszoon, viii, 25, 44, 47, 48, 56, 58, 66, 67, 69, 70, 78, 84; his career, 11; his instructions, 13, 14–16, 21–22, 24; in New Zealand waters, 16–21; in Murderers' Bay, 17–19, 23; his achievement, 22–23Tawiri-rangi, canoe, 4Tegadoo [Anaura] Bay, 30Terawhiti, 51, 65, 87Terra australis incognita,12, 22, 24, 58, 59Thames River, 37, 38, 60, 76Three Kings, 20, 23, 41, 67, 70Toi, 5–6, 84Tokomaru, canoe, 7, 8Tolaga [Uawa] Bay, 31, 65, 80Tom Bowling Bay, 70Tory Channel 65, 79Traps, the, 54Tupaia, 25, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39, 44, 48, 49, 52Turanganui River, 26Turnagain, Cape, 30, 51United East India Company, 10, 11, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23d'Urville, Jules Sébastien César Dumont, 77–83, 84, 85Useless Bay, 80Vancouver, George, 63, 72–73Vigeveno, M. F., viiiVisscher, Frans Jacobszoon, 11–12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 44, 48Waiheke, 82, 92Waitemata, 37, 82, 83Wales, William, 66Wallis, Captain Samuel, 25, 66Wanganui, 5, 78Wellington, 65West Cape, 55, 88Whakatane, 6, 8Whale Island, 32, 80Whale Rock, 40Whangarei, 81Whangaroa, 83Whareunga Bay, 65Wharton, Admiral, 42 n.Whatonga, 5–6, 84White Island, 32White, John, 88, 89 n.Whitianga, 35, 89, 92Williams, Rev. Henry, 83Woody Head, 43Wynyard, Lieutenant-Governor Robert Henry, 88Young, Nicholas, 26Young Nick's Head, 28Zeehaen,13–14, 17, 18, 20