Chapter XXII (1)

Harley L’Estrange is seated beside Helen at the lattice-window in the cottage at Norwood. The bloom of reviving health is on the child’s face, and she is listening with a smile, for Harley is speaking of Leonard with praise, and of Leonard’s future with hope. “And thus,” he continued, “secure from his former trials, happy in his occupation, and pursuing the career he has chosen, we must be content, my dear child, to leave him.”

“Leave him!” exclaimed Helen, and the rose on her cheek faded.

Harley was not displeased to see her emotion. He would have been disappointed in her heart if it had been less susceptible to affection.

“It is hard on you, Helen,” said he, “to separate you from one who has been to you as a brother. Do not hate me for doing so. But I consider myself your guardian, and your home as yet must be mine. We are going from this land of cloud and mist, going as into the world of summer. Well, that does not content you. You weep, my child; you mourn your own friend, but do not forget your father’s. I am alone, and often sad, Helen; will you not comfort me? You press my hand, but you must learn to smile on me also. You are born to be the Comforter. Comforters are not egotists: they are always cheerful when they console.”

The voice of Harley was so sweet, and his words went so home to the child’s heart, that she looked up and smiled in his face as he kissed her ingenuous brow. But then she thought of Leonard, and felt so solitary—so bereft—that tears burst forth again. Before these were dried, Leonard himself entered, and, obeying an irresistible impulse, she sprang to his arms, and, leaning her head on his shoulder, sobbed out, “I am going from you, brother—do not grieve—do not miss me.”

Harley was much moved: he folded his arms, and contemplated them both silently—and his own eyes were moist. “This heart,” thought he, “will be worth the winning!”

He drew aside Leonard, and whispered, “Soothe, but encourage and support her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later.”

It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley.

“She was not weeping when you left her?” asked L’Estrange.

“No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often.”

Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to Leonard, said, “Keep your promise, and write often for the first year. I would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually.”

“Drop!—Ah, my lord!”

“Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from the sorrows of the Past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but step by step, into a new life. You love each other now, as do two children—as brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the love be the same? And is it not better for both of you, that youth should open upon the world with youth’s natural affections free and unforestalled?”

“True! And she is so above me,” said Leonard mournfully.

“No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not _that_, believe me!”

Leonard shook his head.

“Perhaps,” said Harley, with a smile, “I rather feel that you are above me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet, how can she like me as she ought, if her heart is to be full of you?”

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent, and his voice kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood; and in Leonard’s, his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet’s heart gave back no echo—suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself, “Strange—strange—so mere a child, this cannot be love! Still what else to love is there left to me?”

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen, and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home—to himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary phantom. Courage, still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic.

Another day, and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale reopens. Life in all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the Squire farms and hunts; and the Parson preaches and chides and soothes. And Riccabocca reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralises on Men and States. And Violante’s dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their lustre; and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the honourable Mrs Avenel her opera box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, pant to become aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the Parliament, and drudges, and debates, and helps to govern the empire in which the sun never sets. Poor Sun, how tired he must be—but not more tired than the Government! And Randal Leslie has an excellent place in the bureau of a minister, and is looking to the time when he shall resign it to come into Parliament, and on that large arena turn knowledge into power. And meanwhile, he is much where he was with Audley Egerton; but he has established intimacy with the Squire, and visited Hazeldean twice, and examined the house and the map of the property—and very nearly fallen a second time into the Ha-ha, and the Squire believes that Randal Leslie alone can keep Frank out of mischief, and has spoken rough words to his Harry about Frank’s continued extravagance. And Frank does continue to pursue pleasure, and is very miserable, and horribly in debt. And Madame di Negra has gone from London to Paris, and taken a tour into Switzerland, and come back to London again, and has grown very intimate with Randal Leslie; and Randal has introduced Frank to her; and Frank thinks her the loveliest woman in the world, and grossly slandered by certain evil tongues. And the brother of Madame di Negra is expected in England at last; and what with his repute for beauty and for wealth, people anticipate a sensation; and Leonard, and Harley, and Helen? Patience—they will all reappear.

THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

We were listening one evening, rather listlessly, as people sometimes do to an old friend’s narrative of business and family arrangements, when the equal current of such talk was somewhat disturbed by the words—“My brother’s new partner in the business at Wellington, Hoani Riri Tamihana, a very respectable man, and well connected in the Ngatiawa.” This nomenclature was out of the usual way, and was suggestive of inquiry. Our friend was quite open and communicative at first, though some of the company did at last drive him into disagreeable corners. He remembered Hoani Riri when he and his brother became first acquainted with him; he wore a cakahoo or mat dress, had his patoo-patoo in his hand, and was distinguished by several rows of beads made of the bones of fingers and toes, highly polished, and arranged row after row with a graduated symmetry which indicated a very accurate taste. There was no reason why a New Zealander might not get rid of such decorations, and sit on a three-legged stool as composedly as our own countrymen when they have cast off their scarlet coats and white cords; but there was a feature of his early independent life which still stuck to Hoani Riri, and our friend was rather annoyed in having to admit it. He was _tatooed_. It was clear that this incurable relic of the state of society in which he had spent his youth was considered by his partner’s brother a great inconvenience to him. It prevented him—with all his acuteness, said to be remarkable, and his business habits, pronounced as steady and imperturbable—from being able effectively to represent “the house” in this country. Among Parsees, and other Orientals, we have odd enough names put to very discountable and acceptable paper. Moreover, heads of houses and directors of companies will respectfully meet occasionally with a dusky, stately, bearded and turbaned worshipper of the Prophet, or of anything else; but a man whose skin people have taken the liberty of tatooing!—it would not be easy to get clerks and cashkeepers to admit his superiority and importance. There would be a difficulty in cashing his check, even though his presence offered the best possible means of showing its genuineness, since the signature is a tracing of the pattern of the tatoo.

But there was another little matter in Hoani Riri’s personal history, to which fastidious people would find it still more difficult to reconcile themselves, and which indeed might be counted an insurmountable bar to his ever being received in good society in this country, or making an eligible matrimonial connection. He had in his younger days been addicted to human flesh; and, being a very candid and really high-minded man, he admits that, though he has now acquired totally different tastes, the relish with which he partook in cannibal feasts—especially when the fleshy part of a young female was served up—is still a matter of by no means disagreeable recollection to him.

In this part of the conversation we were slightly startled by a physiological friend, who broke into it somewhat vehemently, maintaining that he considered the cannibalism of the New Zealanders—now authenticated beyond all question—to be a remarkable indication of their capacity to become a great civilised people. As this was by no means a self-evident proposition, the physiologist was asked for his reasons, which we shall abbreviate thus: Take a map of the world, and see how distant New Zealand is from the rest of society—if it may so be termed—from the clustering continents and islands of the world over which man and the brute and vegetable creation have gradually spread. If we suppose it to be from Central Asia, or from any other specified part of the world, that the present forms of animal and vegetable life first radiated, we may trace their dispersal, by easy gradations, to the extremities of the rest of the known portions of the globe—to the southern capes of Africa and America—to Borneo and Guinea, and even to Australia. But the New Zealand islands are twelve hundred miles distant from the nearest shore, and that nearest shore is the thinly peopled and almost sterile Australia. Now we can imagine that, while an adventurous race of men—the New Zealanders are believed to be of Malay origin—might overcome so great a difficulty, and establish themselves in these beautiful islands, they would not be accompanied by a like infusion of the animal and the vegetable world. Accordingly, we find the fact precisely in accordance with the supposition. Of indigenous quadrupeds there is scarcely one in New Zealand so large as a house rat. The very few birds found by the earliest European explorers, though some of them had fine plumage, presented no more edible substantiality than a street sparrow. The fruit and vegetable department was equally meagre—there was really almost nothing to support life but an edible fern. Now observe how the poor, abject, in every way inferior race, found scattered round the edge of the great Australian continent, acted in circumstances nearly similar—for there, also, indigenous animals and vegetables suitable for food are rare. They lived on fern roots and cobra worms, with an occasional opossum; and all travellers have remarked, that they manage to preserve themselves from such sources merely in existence, on the border of annihilation, and are consequently a wretched and spiritless race. But your New Zealander, determined to keep up his physical condition, and finding that there was nothing else for it, made a virtue of the necessity of eating his kind—“and in fact,” continues our friend, who seemed to have got on a strange hobby, “the cannibal propensity is deeper in the highest conditioned races of man than most people imagine. Why was pork, for instance, prohibited to the Jews and other Oriental nations, of strong physical temperament and appetite? Why, but that it so closely resembles human flesh that people in a state of semibarbarism might get into the habit of overlooking the distinction, and lapse into cannibalism. It was as well to have a barrier against a system of living which would be so obviously deleterious a feature in society, and the _obsta principiis_ principle was adopted.”

But, without acceding to our physiological friend’s peculiar speculations, there seems to be something extremely curious and interesting in finding that our colonists have for the first time come in contact with elements of progressive civilisation capable of keeping pace with our own; in hearing of savages with whom our blood may mix without deterioration, and detecting in very cannibalism a people destined to so proud a destiny as to share, with the heirs of the highest civilisation, one of the fairest portions of the surface of the earth. The New Zealander is, in fact, the first savage who, after giving battle to the civilised man, and being beaten—as the savage must ever be—has frankly offered to sit down beside us, and enjoy with us the fruits of mutual civilisation. A temperate healthy climate, suitable to a highly conditioned race, was necessary to the development of such a phenomenon. The British race do not spread at all, or spread very scantily, in tropical countries, where the question of superiority of race is at once settled by the hardy European degenerating so as to be in a generation or two inferior to the aboriginal inhabitant. In North America, however, we found a race inhabiting territories where our own people are capable of the fullest development, yet where the aborigines have baffled all efforts at civilisation and improvement. It is the same in the temperate territories of Northern Africa; Hottentots, Kaffirs, Zoolus—all were capable of making some slight advance; but all stopped short, and showed themselves unfit to partake in the great destinies of the British race. The aborigines of Australia, though there may be some differences between tribes a thousand or two miles from each other—as between those of Moreton Bay and the Swan River—are all of an extremely degraded type, both physically and intellectually; and even the most conscientious efforts which have been made, on rare occasions unfortunately, to improve their condition, have ever signally failed. If possible, the nations of Van Diemen’s Island were still a lower type of humanity than those of the Australian continent. There is no reason to suppose that these representatives of almost the lowest type of humanity were cannibals, but we have the cannibalism of the bush-ranger convicts attested beyond all doubt to Parliamentary committees. These desperate men, the essence of British criminality, threatened at one time to overpower the law, and establish an independent community in the rocky island to which they were transported. In their cunning and capacity, in their endurance under calamity, and ruthlessness in victory, they had some resemblance to the New Zealanders, whom also they resembled in having recourse to cannibalism. It is not easy to imagine anything more horrible than the description of two of these monsters of degenerate civilisation, Greenhill and Pierce, who wandered together day after day, each watching his moment for plunging his axe into the skull of the other, while, though each knew his comrade’s murderous intention, they were respectively prevented from separating by the hope of a victory and a feast. It is singular enough that thus, at the antipodes, we should have, next door as it were to each other, the barbarism following the departed civilisation of part of an energetic race, bearing so close a resemblance to the barbarism which is evidently, in another race, but the precedent of a state of high civilisation.

Nothing has been more bandied about, between scepticism and credulity, than cannibalism or anthropophagy. Besides what Herodotus says of the Massagetæ and other tribes, who ate their relatives by way of burial, there have been through all ages charges of this kind, which are purely fabulous; and few believe Purchas’s account of those Africans who exposed human flesh ready for sale at all times, in well-kept booths or shambles, though he gives it on the credit of “John Battell of Essex, a near neighbour of mine, and a man worthy of credit.” The discredit found to attach to the old traveller’s stories about the Peruvians rearing offspring for the table, and the Saracens, who paid large sums for sucking Christian babes, made people disbelieve in any such practice as systematic anthropophagy, though it was generally admitted that miserable beings, half maddened by starvation and hardship, had sometimes forgotten their nature, and devoured their kind, under impulses that rendered them no more accountable for what they did than the most confirmed madman.

The history of New Zealand, however, places on record the fact of a people indulging in systematic cannibalism, accompanied in recent times with the interesting fact, that the systematic cannibal has been found capable of a high civilisation. Cooke took pains to prove the existence of the practice, both by inquiry and experiment. Not content with turning over the remains of cannibal feasts, he got a New Zealand boy to exhibit the propensity on his own deck. The many notices and statements which other travellers have preserved are but a general acknowledgment of what Cooke so distinctly proved. But it is in a now forgotten book, called “A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827, by Augustus Earle,” that we find the most succinct, clear, unvarnished narrative of such a banquet. Mr Earle was an artist, and a wanderer in several unfrequented countries. Although he had thus many things to relate, which could only be taken at his own word, his unquestioned character for truthfulness obtained credence for them. The cannibal feast of which he gives a minute description—too minute to be pleasant—took place on the body of a female slave, killed under circumstances which, in this country, and without looking on the act as merely supplying the market with butcher-meat, we would consider gross treachery. We shall spare our readers the more minute parts of the description, which, in their intense truthfulness, are really an unpleasant piece of reading. But we are desirous to resuscitate a portion of the account which shows the spirit in which the perpetrators acted—a spirit of utilitarian coolness and system, exhibiting no ebullitions of the unrestrained savage nature, but, on the contrary, accompanied, as we shall see, with great self-restraint, shown under circumstances of provocation and disappointment.

“Here stood Captain Duke and myself, both witnesses of a scene which
many travellers have related, and their relations have invariably been
treated with contempt; indeed, the veracity of those who had the
temerity to relate such incredible events has been everywhere
questioned. In this instance it was no warrior’s flesh to be eaten;
there was no enemy’s blood to drink, in order to infuriate them. They
had no revenge to gratify; no plea could they make of their passions
having been roused by battle, nor the excuse that they eat their
enemies to perfect their triumph. This was an action of unjustifiable
cannibalism. Atoi, the chief, who had given orders for this cruel
feast, had only the night before sold us four pigs for a few pounds of
powder; so he had not even the excuse of want of food. After Captain
Duke and myself had consulted with each other, we walked into the
village, determining to charge Atoi with his brutality.

“Atoi received us in his usual manner; and his handsome open
countenance could not be imagined to belong to so savage a monster as
he had proved himself to be. I shuddered at beholding the unusual
quantity of potatoes his slaves were preparing to eat with this
infernal banquet. We talked coolly with him on the subject; for, as we
could not prevent what had taken place, we were resolved to learn (if
possible) the whole particulars. Atoi at first tried to make us
believe he knew nothing about it, and that it was only a meal for his
slaves; but we had ascertained it was for himself and his favourite
companions. After various endeavours to conceal the fact, Atoi frankly
owned that he was only waiting till the cooking was completed to
partake of it. He added that, knowing the horror we Europeans held
these feasts in, the natives were always most anxious to conceal them
from us, and he was very angry that it had come to our knowledge; but,
as he had acknowledged the fact, he had no objection to talk about it.
He told us that human flesh required a greater number of hours to cook
than any other; that, if not done enough, it was very tough, but when
sufficiently cooked it was as tender as paper. He held in his hand a
piece of paper, which he tore in illustration of his remark. He said
the flesh then preparing would not be ready till next morning; but one
of his sisters whispered in my ear that her brother was deceiving us,
as they intended feasting at sunset.

“We inquired why and how he had murdered the poor girl. He replied,
that running away from him to her own relations was her only crime. He
then took us outside his village, and showed us the post to which she
had been tied, and laughed to think how he had cheated her: ‘For,’
said he, ‘I told her I only intended to give her a flogging; but I
fired, and shot her through the heart!’ My blood ran cold at this
relation, and I looked with feelings of horror at the savage while he
related it. Shall I be credited when I again affirm, that he was not
only a handsome young man, but mild and genteel in his demeanour? He
was a man we had admitted to our table, and was a general favourite
with us all; and the poor victim to his bloody cruelty was a pretty
girl of about sixteen years of age!...

“After some time spent in contemplating the miserable scene before us,
during which we gave full vent to the most passionate exclamations of
disgust, we determined to spoil this intended feast: this resolution
formed, we rose to execute it. I ran off to our beach, leaving Duke on
guard, and, collecting all the white men I could, I informed them of
what had happened, and asked them if they would assist in destroying
the oven, and burying the remains of the girl: they consented, and
each having provided himself with a shovel or a pickaxe, we repaired
in a body to the spot. Atoi and his friends had by some means been
informed of our intention, and they came out to prevent it. He used
various threats to deter us, and seemed highly indignant; but as none
of his followers appeared willing to come to blows, and seemed ashamed
that such a transaction should have been discovered by us, we were
permitted by them to do as we chose. We accordingly dug a tolerably
deep grave; then we resolutely attacked the oven. On removing the
earth and leaves, the shocking spectacle was presented to our view—the
four quarters of a human body half-roasted. During our work, clouds of
steam enveloped us, and the disgust created by our task was almost
overpowering. We collected all the parts we could recognise; the heart
was placed separately, we supposed as a savoury morsel for the chief
himself. We placed the whole in the grave, which we filled up as well
as we could, and then broke and scattered the oven.

“By this time the natives from both villages had assembled; and a
scene similar to this was never before witnessed in New Zealand. Six
unarmed men, quite unprotected, (for there was not a single vessel in
the harbour, nor had there been for a month,) had attacked and
destroyed all the preparations of the natives for what they consider a
national feast; and this was done in the presence of a great body of
armed chiefs, who had assembled to partake of it. After having
finished this exploit, and our passion and disgust had somewhat
subsided, I could not help feeling that we had acted very imprudently
in thus tempting the fury of these savages, and interfering in an
affair that certainly was no concern of ours; but as no harm accrued
to any of our party, it plainly shows the influence ‘the white men’
have already obtained over them: had the offence we committed been
done by any hostile tribe, hundreds of lives would have been
sacrificed.

“The next day our old friend King George paid us a long visit, and we
talked over the affair very calmly. He highly disapproved of our
conduct. ‘In the first place,’ said he, ‘you did a foolish thing,
which might have cost you your lives; and yet did not accomplish your
purpose after all, as you merely succeeded in burying the flesh near
the spot on which you found it. After you went away, it was again
taken up, and every bit was eaten;’—a fact I afterwards ascertained by
examining the grave, and finding it empty. King George further said,
‘It was an old custom, which their fathers practised before them; and
you had no right to interfere with their ceremonies. I myself,’ added
he, ‘have left off eating human flesh, out of compliment to you white
men; but you have no reason to expect the same compliance from all the
other chiefs. What punishment have you in England for thieves and
runaways?’ We answered, ‘After trial, flogging or hanging.’ ‘Then,’ he
replied, ‘the only difference in our laws is, you flog and hang, but
we shoot and eat.’”

What renders the rapid civilisation of the New Zealanders the more remarkable is, that the practice of eating human flesh appears to have continued for several years after Mr Earle’s visit. Among other instances which might be cited, the following occurs in the Lords’ Report on New Zealand in 1844. Mr Francis Molesworth is examined.

_Q._ “Do any of the tribes in the interior practise cannibalism?”

_A._ “Yes, and they do so on the coast. There was a case about
eighteen months before I came away.”

_Q._ “What were the circumstances of that case?”

_A._ “It was the case of Rangihaeata, at some festival or other; he
took a slave girl, and murdered her and ate her. I knew the
particulars of that case from a man of the name of Jenkins. He was
there at the time, and offered to buy the girl from Rangihaeata, but
he would not agree to it; he offered pigs for her, but Rangihaeata
said, ‘A piece of Maori flesh is much better than pork,’ and he killed
her and ate her. It is not very long since an encounter took place
between two tribes near Auckland, and a number of prisoners were
taken, and they were all eaten.”

Mr Angas went through the country about two years after this testimony was given, but perhaps about five years after the state of matters to which it refers. He was collecting the materials for his magnificent illustrations of New Zealand life and scenery, where he gives a very pleasing portrait of a young lady, Kaloki, with this memorandum attached to it:—

“I met her on a visit to her friends at Te Aroh Pah, near Wellington,
in company with Kutia, the wife of Rauparaha, and a large party of her
attendants from the Roturua lakes, whither she offered to accompany
me, for the purpose of sketching and obtaining portraits of the
principal chiefs, adding that her introduction would be an immediate
passport throughout the entire district.”

There is something in this very different in tone from the description of the cannibal feast. But we cannot turn even Mr Angas’s fine illustrations, without feeling that they represent a state of matters in rapid transition; that a few years will have swept away what they embody of the past state of the country; and that the civilised descendants of the mingled race, who seem destined to people these beautiful islands, will turn to them with a strange interest, as an embodiment of customs and manners that, in the antipodes, have grown older in a generation than, in this country of unassisted self-effected civilisation, the usages of our Saxon ancestors have grown in a thousand years. Even after going beyond these thousand years, we find no proof that there was cannibalism in this country. The New Zealand gentlemen of the next generation will have their after-dinner jokes about who had eaten whose uncle or grandfather, as Scottish gentlemen have had their talk about old family feuds. Here, among the most curious of Mr Angas’s pictures, is a representation of the mansion-house of that Rauparaha, whose wife was the friend of the interesting Kaloki. It has an Egyptian-shaped door elaborately carved. At either side, the extremities of the roof-beams are supported by square pillars, covered with hideous representations of animal life. The name of the mansion—a name which it will probably long preserve—is “Eat-man-house:” probably its mother-of-pearl-eyed monsters have gazed on many a jolly feast beneath its roof. We turn over Mr Angas’s pages, and next find a portrait of a gentleman in an easy attitude, and in a good modern English dress, which does his tailor credit. He has just one anachronism, as the French would call it—like our friend’s partner, he is tatooed; and there is no denying the grotesqueness produced by the immediate contact of the artificiality of savage with that of civilised life.

The evidence collected by Cooke and Bankes, of the extent to which civilisation had grown among these people, unaided from without, might have been expected to create more astonishment than it did. The size of their war canoes, the number of men accommodated and disciplined to formidable manœuvres in them, the knowledge of navigation which they displayed, and, above all, the elaborate and in many respects symmetrical decoration of their war vessels, their weapons, their houses, their public monuments and their burial-places, must have all from the first indicated them as a remarkable people. Their profuse decorations in wood and stone seem, when compared with those of other nations moving onward to civilisation, to indicate that the human intellect in its struggles after symmetry, beauty, harmony of form, or whatever artistic perfection may be called, must pass through endeavours having a generic resemblance. In the sculptured stones of Scotland, to which we lately referred, in the older Egyptian monuments, in the alabaster carvings of upper Asia, in the ornaments of the lately discovered cities of Central America,—there is a common characteristic resemblance to the artistic labours of the New Zealander.

The obdurate ferocity of the inhabitants, which made our navigators shun their shores for upwards of half a century, was of a kind, when examined, to contain promise of civilisation. However deep their hatred and unextinguishable their pugnacity, they were not capricious emanations of mere savage passions; both had their causes, and were kept alive to produce effects; and had we, in our intercourse with them, looked on them and treated them as reasoning and in many respects able men, we would have fared better. All the foreign blood they shed, whether openly or treacherously, was with the one design of protection—of saving their liberties and their possessions from invasion; and when looking back from the dawn of peace and progress which has now brightened over this singular people, the white man is bound to confess that they had reason in their suspicions, and that they showed wisdom and courage in their conduct. The war which lasted in New Zealand from 1843, when the land disputes began, to 1848, though productive of little bloodshed, is one of the most remarkable in the world’s history. Since the invasion of Britain by the Romans, it was unknown that the natives, thinly scattered over a large territory (the islands cover the same area with Britain, and were supposed to be peopled by about 150,000 inhabitants) should for years keep a civilised force at defiance. The equality of the contest involved no reproach to the civilised troops, since they found that, in the persons of tatooed savages, they met an army under consummate commanders disciplined to the highest point, and trained to partisan warfare. They were expert at the use of the rifle, knew well the art of stockade fortification, and were in all respects a match for their adversaries, with the addition of knowing the country and its resources. Were there a population such as these New Zealanders in Southern Africa, the prospect of our retaining our possessions near the Cape would be quite hopeless. Experienced military men noticed a generic difference between the New Zealand war and other conflicts with aborigines. The bravest savages can generally do no more than fight hand to hand; the New Zealanders conducted campaigns. Barbarians generally see the result of successful operations in extensive bloodshed; but the New Zealanders saw it only in success, and, while they were parsimonious of the lives of their own followers, did not spill uselessly the blood of their opponents. The usual difficulty in bringing civilised troops to deal with savages arises from the former always operating with and against masses, and being unprepared for the peculiar individual machinations of combatants who do not work gregariously and for effective results, but individually, for bloodshed and plunder. In individual strategy the American Indians have excelled all the world; and it was long ere our troops, through the solemn, stiff, unadaptable movements of the eighteenth century, were taught to protect themselves from the untiring inexhaustible cunning of the scalper. Much provoking and useless slaughter took place ere they were prepared for this mode of warfare; but, though frightful and formidable in appearance, it was easily dealt with. Those who had experienced Indian warfare found that totally different resources were required in New Zealand. The individual cunning and ferocity, and the corresponding danger, were wanting; but, on the other hand, an enemy was found capable of conducting a war patiently and scientifically, with an end beyond mere slaughter or momentary triumph. We take this view from the occasional expressions in the military despatches, and still more from their general tone, which assumes that of men dealing with enemies on a level with themselves. The following, which is a specimen taken from the miscellaneous mass of despatches in the Parliamentary papers, is evidently not written about a parcel of wretched savages:—

“On examining the pah, I found it to be built on a very strong post,
protected by a row of timber palisades, with trenches and traverses
across; about 80 paces long, and 85 broad; in the shape of a
parallelogram, with flanking defences.

“There was also a bank of earth thrown up on the scarp side of the
trenches, which, owing to the heavy rain, were full of water. The
position altogether is a very strong one, and would have been almost
impregnable without artillery; but a hill, about 500 yards distant,
opposite the front face, commanded it completely. Therefore, had the
enemy remained, we might soon have dislodged them with our guns, which
were in readiness at Porirua, in command of Captain Henderson, R.A.

“The pah stands on a very high ground, fronting the harbour; at the
foot of it runs a deep narrow creek, fordable at low water; the ground
about it is excessively swampy, which the troops had to pass over. On
the side the pah stands on, rises a very steep bank, which, even
without opposition, the men had difficulty in mounting. And on the
proper left of the position is a very deep ravine, the side of which
is thickly wooded. The right face is also thickly wooded, and the
ground gradually slopes away into the valley.

“The rear was the weakest part as to its defence; the ground covered
with thick scrub; but, from its locality, I do not consider a position
could have been taken up by us on that side. The defences on the front
face were of a stronger description than any other.”

“On the morning of the 3d instant, a combined movement was made from
the pah at Pauhatanui and Porirua, consisting of 6 officers and 120
men of the 58th, 65th, and 99th regiments, and 30 militia, followed by
150 native allies, from the former; and 4 officers, 100 men of the
Royal Artillery, 58th and 65th regiments, with 80 native allies, under
command of Major Arney, from the latter place, for the purpose of
attacking the rebel chief, and preventing his escape from the Horokiwi
valley. We proceeded about four miles into the woods, covering our
advance with the usual precautions. The enemy soon discovered our
approach, and quickly retired; but, from his fires being still alight,
it was evident he had fled into the bush that morning.

“Night coming on, and being uncertain as to the direction of the
enemy, or the route they had taken, I deemed it then unadvisable to
proceed farther.

“Although our efforts have only led to the dispersion, and not to the
total destruction of the rebels, which was my anxious wish to have
accomplished, yet, by gaining possession of the stronghold of the
enemy, we are enabled to complete the line of outposts at Porirua, so
as effectually to prevent any return of the rebels to the district of
the Hutt.

“I beg to assure your Excellency that all under my command have well
earned from their superiors every credit and approbation, for the zeal
and cheerfulness they have exhibited under the severe trials and
privations to which they have been subjected for a long time past.”

The Governor, in a despatch of the 9th of July 1849, says—

“I have been assured by many excellent and experienced officers, well
acquainted with America and this country, that there is, in a military
point of view, no analogy at all between the natives of the two
countries; the Maories, both in weapons and knowledge of the art of
war, a skill in planning, and perseverance in carrying out the
operations of a lengthened campaign, being infinitely superior to the
American Indians. In fact, there can be no doubt that they are, for
warfare in this country, even better equipped than our own troops.”

He states that—

“They have repeatedly, in encounters with our troops, been reported by
our own officers to be equal to any European troops; and are such good
tacticians that we have never yet succeeded in bringing them to a
decisive encounter, they having always availed themselves of the
advantage afforded by their wilds and fastnesses. Their armed bodies
move without any baggage, and are attended by the women, who carry
potatoes on their backs for the warriors, or subsist them by digging
fern root, so that they are wholly independent of supplies, and can
move and subsist their forces in countries where our troops cannot
live.”

And then, after describing the rapidity and secrecy with which they can move their forces to great distances, and concentrate them on any selected point, we have the other and more pleasing side of the picture, indicating that these formidable qualifications may, under judicious management, give us able coadjutors, instead of deadly enemies, in our efforts to turn to good purpose the material advantages of their fine country.

“They are fond of agriculture; take great pleasure in cattle and
horses; like the sea, and form good sailors; are attached to
Europeans; admire their customs and manners; are extremely ambitious
of rising in civilisation, and of becoming skilled in European arts.
They are apt at learning; in many respects extremely conscientious and
observant of their word; are ambitious of honour, and are probably the
most covetous race in the world. They are also agreeable in manners,
and attachments of a lasting character readily and frequently spring
up between them and the Europeans.”

Since the conclusion of the war these useful qualities—covetousness included—have, out of formidable enemies, been making apparently excellent subjects. Instead of the nominal submission of savages, with an underground of treachery, ready to come forth in ineffective but mischievous outbreaks, they appear to have made their terms of peace as sincerely as any civilised nation has ever treated, determining to reap the fruits of tranquil co-operation. Not that we believe they would have done so had they seen a clear prospect of defying the British arms, and driving the civilised settlers out of the country: this they would have preferred; but, finding it impracticable, they made up their minds, like wise men, to that next best course, which they are now learning to believe is the best of all. By the time when peace was renewed, we had also learned _our_ lesson. We had become acquainted with their nature, and seen that it was different from that of the ordinary savage. Many social blunders and absurdities arise from mistaking a wise man for a fool, and humouring him accordingly. So, almost from the beginning, there was a series of blunders committed, in treating these clever barbarians as it had been found necessary to treat other aborigines. In fact, under the form of treaties, agreements, sales, or any other nomenclature of civilised and complex life which our transactions with ordinary savages may assume, the end of all is that they are at the mercy of the civilised man, and hold their own side of the bargain by the tenure of his justice and mercy. What he calls a reciprocal treaty, an equitable adjustment, a fair sale for a just price, they must e’en be content to hold so to be; they do not know the meaning of what is said or done, but they know that they must submit. Now, the difficulty with the New Zealanders was, that they knew to a certain extent what they were about, and wanted to know more. They saw the object of some of the transactions with them, but they had sense enough to know that there were other objects beyond what their limited knowledge of the world enabled them to see, and they must be at the bottom of all ere they would rest content. Hence that fearful inextricable land-sale question, filling its hundredweights of blue books. Had the natives possessed neither knowledge nor sense, they would have been easily disposed of by the _sic volo sic jubeo_. Had they possessed both, there would have been hard bargains struck and kept; but possessing, as they did, much sense, but little knowledge, transactions about matters which they could not at first comprehend, yet were determined to comprehend ere they gave way and were satisfied, seemed interminable.

We must not be understood as entering on the controversy between the New Zealand Company and either the past or the present Government, in making a passing reference to the events in New Zealand during the last twenty years, as they appeared to the natives. When the first colonists settled in the country, the Government left them to make what they could of it. New Zealand was an independent country—they might buy land of those who could sell it, and take their chance; but they were not to expect that, if they bought the land at their own price—perhaps a kettle, a hatchet, or a string of beads—and took such a title as they could get, they were to be backed as absolute owners by the whole power of the British empire. The Government would send a consul, as to any other independent territory to which British subjects resorted, but would do nothing more. But emigration to the new territory took such an impulse, that it was necessary to alter this policy. Besides the missionaries and other individual settlers, the great corporation which first appeared as the New Zealand Association, and merged into the New Zealand Company, was formed. A deep ambition burned in the bosom of those who devised this project. Looking beyond mere wealth, or nominal rank, or temporary notoriety, they saw a possible vista of future greatness in being the humble exiles whose names would afterwards be echoed as those of the founders of a great empire. Nor was the notion quite preposterous. No fairer field for colonial enterprise had ever presented itself to the world. Beyond doubt, the energetic British race, moderately filling these delightful islands, and carrying with them all our constitutional privileges and advantages, without the hereditary evils in pauperism and degradation that weigh them down, would form an empire to predominate more powerfully in the southern hemisphere than ours does in the northern. It was the ambition of these schemers, many of them able men, to be the planters of this empire. It was a bold and brilliant project. Let us, since it has departed with the shadows of other great forgotten projects, though we say but little of it, say that little kindly. The empire on which their hopes were founded may hereafter arise; but neither its reality, nor the fame of being its fabricator, is now for them. They had scarcely even gone far enough to bear the _magni nominis umbra_.

Well, to return to the natives. The British Government found reasons for changing its policy of inaction. Not only was a powerful body of British subjects making an independent settlement on the islands, but the French were proposing, as no other Government wanted them, to take possession of them for a convict settlement. To be in a position to protect its own subjects who had gone there, and to assert a priority to France, the British sovereignty was proclaimed on 30th January 1840. It is said that the French proclamation was thus anticipated by barely four days. The independence of New Zealand having, however, been previously acknowledged, it would seem scarcely logical, if it were otherwise right, to supersede the native chiefs in their authority, without their consent. Accordingly, on the 5th of February, the celebrated treaty of Waitangi was negotiated with the chiefs. The principle of this document was, that the sovereignty of the British crown was acknowledged to extend over the islands, the inhabitants receiving the privileges of British subjects. The right of property in the soil was reserved to the respective chiefs and tribes, subject only to a right of preemption by the Crown when they sold land, and an adjustment of such equitable claims as might arise out of the previous land transactions.

Now, whether this may or may not have been a wise method of managing a difficult piece of business, the treaty, so far as the natives were concerned, was a solemn farce. The chiefs had first to be united into a fictitious oligarchy, called the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand. They knew as much about the nature of a treaty, in the diplomatic sense in which civilised nations understand it, and insist on its being kept when they can, as about the predicaments and the antinomies. But their sagacity taught them that it was something in itself not dangerous or formidable. The piece of paper could not bombard their pahs, or sink their war canoes; and as to anything it might impart to their prejudice, they were as strong as ever to resist its enforcement. Here lay the difference between such a treaty with New Zealanders and with ordinary savages. These would have been bound to submit, scarcely able to comprehend how or wherefore, unless in a moment of heedless treachery they attempted to repudiate the whole. The New Zealanders were, for their own sakes, pretty good bargain-keepers, when they knew fully the extent to which they had practically committed themselves; but were very jealous of admitting rights which they were not conscious of having knowingly conceded.

At the root of all the complex disputes that followed was their ignorance of the nature of a sale of land. They did not individually possess any—scarcely any uncivilised people do; and they could not comprehend the bartering it like a mat or a bunch of arrows. Still they were ready to make bargains, giving in exchange what they might be found empowered to give, without any warranty of title, as lawyers say. What each chief appears to have bargained for was, that, in consideration of the present given to him, he should abstain personally from disturbing the purchaser over so much land—an engagement he would come to the more readily the less right he had to it. When the rights so acquired had to be officially investigated, under the sanction of the British Government, a whole shoal of land-sharks appeared. One man claimed a territory about the size of a medium English county, which he had bought with a keg of gunpowder. A company claimed the middle island, about the size of Ireland, having given for it a few hundred pounds’ worth of merchandise, with an annuity of £100 a-year to a chief. Among the tempting goods sent out to make a large purchase, by a benevolent association in London, were enumerated “200 muskets; 16 single-barrelled guns; 8 double do.; 15 fowling-pieces; 81 kegs of gunpowder; 2 casks of ball-cartridge; 4 kegs lead slabs; 24 bullet-moulds; 11 quires cartridge paper; 200 cartouche boxes; 1500 flints, and 200 tomahawks.” In some instances there were no less than eight purchasers of the same territory, all possessing titles equally satisfactory, and each demanding that the law should secure to him the estate he had bought with a bundle of red cloth, or a musket, as if it had been a bargain for a piece of property in Middlesex.

The natives had reasons for forming some strange conclusions from the scene of confusion which followed. Where, they asked, was the source of law and authority among these strangers? First there came among them the captains of whaling vessels—noisy, imperative, and exercising all the visible authority of great chiefs. Then came the missionaries—men whose bearing and conversation were totally different from those of the whaling captains. Their voice was mild and their manner subdued, and instead of pea-jackets they wore black coats, descending in two long tapering strips behind; yet, withal, they had a command in their quiet manner, and seemed to consider themselves rather the masters than the slaves of the boisterous sea captains. Thirdly, there came the representatives of the New Zealand Company—men of fortune and station in society, some of them bearing military titles. The New Zealanders see at once that they are gentlemen—worshipful men, who have authority in their air and manner. What, then, is their astonishment when some shabby-looking and coarse-mannered personages come, and snub these worshipful gentlemen with impunity, and tell them to desist from this, and to do that—and actually apprehend one of them, and lock him up; and they submit to the indignity without drawing a trigger? The gentlemen of the New Zealand Company, in fact, wished to establish a sort of local organisation, partaking of the nature of a legislative and an executive, to preserve order among the newly-arrived settlers, and probably to keep the natives in awe with the show of something like a government. So was formed the “Committee of Colonists,” with rules drawn up to serve a very laudable purpose, if nothing more was intended than the preservation of order until sufficient Government official service was supplied. In among these gentlemen, however, march such subordinate officers as the Government can afford for an embryo settlement. Possibly these individuals were not the less consequential and rigid that their original social condition was humble. They managed, at all events, to excite the wrath and ridicule of the gentlemen colonists; but what could these do? After having formed their own organisation, any resistance to the law would have had a very ugly appearance, and they immediately gave way to the “constituted authorities.” Here was matter of wonder to the natives, and it was not reduced when they saw a young man, of aristocratic birth and condition, taken to jail by a policeman for some breach of regulation. The natural order of society seemed inverted among these haughty foreigners. But this was not enough. After the successive authority of the ship captains, the missionaries, the New Zealand Company, and the governor with his subordinates, comes Mr Commissioner Spain, with authority from the Queen of Britain to hold a Court of Inquiry as to the land claims—to examine witnesses, Maori and English—the former being questioned through an interpreter. They ask what this new chief or king is to do. They are told that he is “to report;” and when they ask the meaning of report, their attention is directed to the sound made by the discharge of a cannon. And so they are left to make the best of it.