CHAPTER XXIV.
NEW ZEALAND COLONISED.
1. Kororarika.—All this fighting of the Maori tribes made them more dependent on the trade they had with white men. They could neither make guns nor powder for themselves, and the tribe that could purchase none of the white man’s weapons was sure to be slaughtered and eaten by other tribes. Hence white men were more eagerly welcomed, and in course of time nearly two hundred of them were living Maori fashion with the tribes. But it was at the Bay of Islands that the chief trading was carried on. For it was there that the kauri timber grew; it was there that the pigs were most plentiful and the cargoes of flax most easily obtained; and when a man named Turner set up a grog-shop on the shores of the bay all the whaling ships made this their usual place for resting and refitting. Behind the beach the hills rise steeply, and on these hills a number of white men built themselves homes securely fenced, and defended, sometimes even by a cannon or two. But down on the little green flat next to the beach, rude houses were more numerous. In the year 1838 there were about 500 persons resident in the little town, which was now called Kororarika, but at times there were nearly double that number of people resident in it for months together. A wild and reckless place it was, for sailors reckoned themselves there to be beyond the reach of English law.
At one time as many as thirty-six ships lay off the town of Kororarika, and in a single year 150 ships visited the bay; generally staying a month or more at anchor. The little church and the Catholic mission station up on the hill did less good to the natives than these rough sailors did harm, and at length the more respectable white men could stand the disorder no longer. They formed an association to maintain decency. They seized, tried, fined or sometimes locked up for a time the worst offenders, and twice they stripped the ruffians naked, gave them a coat of tar, stuck them all over with white down from a native plant, and when they were thus decorated, expelled them from the town, with a promise of the same treatment if ever they were seen back in it.
2. Hokianga.—Long before this the capacities of New Zealand and the chances of making wealth there became well known in England, and in 1825 an association was formed to colonise the country. It sent out an agent, who reported that Hokianga, a deep estuary on the west coast, just opposite to Kororarika, and only thirty miles away from it, was a charming place for a settlement. The agent bought a square mile of land from the Maoris and also two little islands in the harbour. The company fitted out a ship the Rosanna, and sixty colonists sailed out in her to form the pioneers of the new colony. They landed, and liked the look of the place, but they were timid by reason of the tales they had heard of Maori ferocity. Now at this time the Ngapuhis were at war with the Arawas, and the latter were getting up a war dance, which the settlers were just in time to see. Five or six hundred men stood in four long rows, stamping in time to a chant of their leader. It was night, a fire lit up their quivering limbs and their rolling eyes; they joined in a chorus, and when they came to particular words they hissed like a thousand serpents; they went through the performance of killing their enemies, cutting up their bodies and eating them. The settlers fell into deep meditation and departed. Not half a dozen remained in New Zealand, the others went to Sydney, and so after an expense of £20,000 this association, which had been formed for the kindly purpose of putting people in lands less crowded than their own, failed and was disbanded.
3. Settled Government.—Between 1825 and 1835 the Maoris of the North Island were in a miserable state. Wars and massacres and cannibal feasts made the country wretched, and though the missionaries were respected they could not secure peace. But they persuaded the chiefs of some of the weaker tribes to appeal to England for protection against the conquering warriors who oppressed and destroyed their people. It was in 1831 that this petition was sent to King William, and about the same time the white men at Kororarika, terrified at the violence with which the Waikato men were ravaging the surrounding lands, asked the Governor at Sydney to interfere. The result was that although the English would not regularly take possession of New Zealand, they chose Mr. Busby, a gentleman well known in New South Wales, to be the Resident there, his business being, so far as possible, to keep order. How he was to keep order without men or force to make his commands obeyed it is hard to see; but he was expected to do whatever could be done by persuasion, and to send for a British war-ship if ever he thought it was needed.