The New Zealand mainland—if the word may be used for anything so slender and fragmentary—is long as well as slight. Nearly eleven hundred miles divide the south end of Stewart Island from Cape Maria Van Diemen. If the outposts of the main are counted in, then the Dominion becomes a much larger, though more watery, expanse. Its length is about doubled, and the contrast between the sunny Kermadecs and the storm-beaten Aucklands becomes one of those things in which Science delights. It is a far cry from the trepang and tropic birds (the salmon-pink bo’suns) of the northern rocks to the sea-lions that yawn at the casual visitor to Disappointment Island. The Kermadecs—to employ an overworked expression—bask in the smiles of perpetual summer. The Three Kings, lying thirty-eight miles beyond the tip of the North Island, might be Portuguese isles, and the Chathams—as far as climate goes—bits of France. But the peaty groups of the shivering South lie right across the pathway of the Antarctic gales. Even on their [205]quieter days the grey sky that overhangs them looks down on a sea that is a welter of cold indigo laced with white. Relentless erosion by ocean rollers from the south-west has worn away their western and south-western shores into steep cliffs, cut by sharp-edged fissures and pitted by deep caves. For their vegetation you must seek their eastern slopes and valleys, or the shores of land-locked harbours. On some of the smaller of them, parakeets and other land-birds learn to fly little and fly low, lest they should be blown out to sea. The wild ducks of the Aucklands are flightless, and in the same group are found flies without wings. In the Snares the mutton-bird tree lies down on its stomach to escape the buffeting blasts, clutching the treacherous peat with fresh rootlets as it grows or crawls along. The western front of the Aucklands shows a wall of dark basalt, thirty miles long, and from four hundred to twelve hundred feet high. No beach skirts it; no trees soften it; only one inlet breaks it. Innumerable jets and little cascades stream from its sharp upper edge, but—so say eye-witnesses—none appear to reach the sea: the pitiless gusts seize the water, scatter it into spray-smoke and blow it into air. The wind keeps the waterfalls from falling, and their vapour, driven upward, has been mistaken for smoke from the fires of castaway seamen. There is, however, one race to whom even the smallest and wildest of our islets are a source of unceasing interest and ever-fresh, if malodorous, pleasure. Zoologists know them for the procreant cradles of [206]Antarctic sea-fowl. And that, from the Kermadecs to the Bounties and the Antipodes, they assuredly are. On Raoul—the largest Kermadec—you may walk among thousands of mutton-birds and kick them off their nests. On the West King, gannets and mackerel gulls cover acre after acre so thickly that you cannot help breaking eggs as you tread, or stumbling against mother-gannets, sharp in the beak. On dismal Antipodes Island, the dreary green of grass and sedge is picked out with big white birds like white rosettes. In the Aucklands, the wandering albatross is found in myriads, and may be studied as it sits guarding its solitary egg on the rough nest from which only brute force will move it. On the spongy Snares, penguins have their rookeries; mutton-birds swarm, not in thousands, but millions; sea-hawks prey on the young of other birds, and will fly fiercely at man, the strange intruder. Earth, air, and sea, all are possessed by birds of unimaginable number and intolerable smell. Penguins describe curves in the air as they dive neatly from the rocks. Mutton-birds burrow in the ground, whence their odd noises mount up strangely. Their subterranean clamour mingles with the deafening discords of the rookeries above ground. On large patches the vegetation is worn away and the surface defiled. All the water is fouled. The odour, like the offence of Hamlet’s uncle, “is rank: it smells to Heaven.” Mr. Justice Chapman found it strong a mile out to sea. In that, however, the Snares must cede the palm to the Bounties; dreadful and barren rocks on which a few [207]insects—a cricket notably—alone find room to exist among the sea-birds. In violent tempests the foam is said to search every corner of the Bounties, cleansing them for the nonce from their ordure. But the purity, such as it is, is short lived. All who have smelt them are satisfied to hope that surf and sea-birds may ever retain possession there. Indeed, as much may be said for the Snares. Science may sometimes perambulate them, just as Science—with a handkerchief to her nose—may occasionally pick her steps about the Bounties; but none save savants and sea-lions are likely to claim any interest in these noisome castles of the sea-fowl.
Some of our larger outposts in the ocean are not repulsive by any means. If human society were of no account, the Kermadecs would be pleasant enough. One or two of them seem much more like Robinson Crusoe’s fertile island, as we read of it in Defoe’s pages, than is Juan Fernandez. Even the wild goats are not lacking. Flowering trees grow on well-wooded and lofty Raoul; Meyer Island has a useful boat-harbour; good fish abound in the warm and pellucid sea. To complete the geniality, the largest island—some seven or eight thousand acres in size—has a hot bathing-pool. One heroic family defy solitude there, cultivate the fertile soil, and grow coffee, bananas, figs, vines, olives, melons, peaches, lemons, citrons, and, it would seem, anything from grenadilloes to potatoes. Twenty years ago, or thereabout, our Government tempted a handful of settlers to try life there. A volcanic disturbance scared them away, however, and the one family has [208]since plodded on alone. Stories are told of the life its members live, of their skill in swimming and diving, and their struggles with armies of rats and other troubles. Once when the steamer that visits them yearly was late, its captain found the mother of the family reduced to her last nib—with which she nevertheless had kept up her diary. On board the steamer was the lady’s eldest daughter, a married woman living in New Zealand. She was making a rough voyage of a thousand miles to see her mother—for two days. Sooner or later—if talk means anything—Auckland enterprise will set up a fish-curing station on Meyer Island. That, I suppose, will be an answer to the doubts which beset the minds of the Lords of the British Admiralty when this group, with its Breton name, was annexed to New Zealand. The colony asked for it, and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were duly consulted. Their secretary wrote a laconic reply to the Colonial Office observing that if New Zealand wanted the Kermadecs my Lords saw “no particular reason” why “that colony” should not have “these islands or islets”; but of what possible use they could be to New Zealand my Lords couldn’t imagine.
The Three Kings mark a point in our history. It was on the 5th of January that Tasman discovered them. So he named them after the three wise kings of the East—Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The Great King, the largest of them, is not very great, for it contains, perhaps, six or seven hundred acres. It is cliff-bound,[209] but a landing may usually be made on one side or the other, for its shape resembles the device of the Isle of Man. Into one of its coves a cascade comes down, tumbling two hundred feet from a green and well-timbered valley above. Tasman saw the cascade; and as the Heemskirk and her cockle-shell of a consort were short of fresh water, he sent “Francis Jacobsz in our shallop, and Mr. Gillimans, the supercargo,” with casks to be filled. When, however, the two boats neared the rocks, the men found thereon fierce-looking, well-armed natives, who shouted to them in hoarse voices. Moreover, the surf ran too high for an easy landing. So the Dutchmen turned from the white cascade, and pulled back to Tasman, who took them aboard again, and sailed away, to discover the Friendly Islands. Thus it came about that though he discovered our country, and spent many days on our coasts, neither he nor any of his men ever set foot on shore there. Did Francis Jacobsz, one wonders, really think the surf at Great King so dangerous? Or was it that good Mr. Gillimans, supercargo and man of business, disliked the uncomfortable-looking spears and patu-patu in the hands of the Rarewa men? Tasman, at any rate, came to no harm at the Three Kings, which is more than can be said of all shipmasters; for they are beset with tusky reefs and strong currents. A noted wreck there was that of the steamship Elingamite, which went down six years ago, not far from the edge of the deep ocean chasm where the submarine foundations of New Zealand seem to end suddenly in a deep cleft of ocean.
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Thanks to a thick white fog, she ran on a reef in daylight on a quiet Sunday morning. She was carrying fifty-eight of a crew and about twice as many passengers. There was but a moderate sea, and, as those on board kept cool, four boats and two rafts were launched. Though one boat was capsized, and though waves washed several persons off the wreck, nearly every one swam to a boat or was picked up. One woman, however, was picked up dead. No great loss or sufferings need have followed but for the fog. As it was, the shipwrecked people were caught by currents, and had to row or drift about blindly. Their fates were various. The largest boat, with fifty-two souls, was luckiest: it reached Hohoura on the mainland after but twenty-five hours of wretchedness. There the Maori—like the barbarous people of Melita—showed them no small kindness. It is recorded that one native hurried down to the beach with a large loaf, which was quickly divided into fifty-two morsels. Others came with horses, and the castaways, helped up to the kainga, had hot tea and food served out to them. Whale-boats then put out and intercepted a passing steamer, which at once made for the Three Kings. There, on Tuesday, eighty-nine more of the shipwrecked were discovered and rescued. One party of these had come within a hundred and fifty yards of an islet, only to be swept away by a current against which they struggled vainly. Finally, they made Great King, and supported life on raw shell-fish till, on the third day after the wreck, the sun, coming out, enabled them (with the aid of their [211]watch-glasses) to dry the six matches which they had with them. Five of these failed to ignite; the sixth gave them fire, and, with fire, hope and comparative comfort. They even gave chase to the wild goats of the island, but, needless to say, neither caught nor killed any.
One of the rafts, unhappily, failed to make land at all. A strong current carried it away to sea, and in four days it drifted sixty-two miles. Fifteen men and one woman were on it, without food or water, miserably clothed, and drenched incessantly by the wash or spray. The woman gave up part of her clothing to half-naked men, dying herself on the third day. Four others succumbed through exhaustion; two threw themselves into the sea in delirium. Three steamers were out searching for the unfortunates. It was the Penguin, a King’s ship, which found them, as the fifth day of their sufferings was beginning, and when but one man could stand upright. The captain of the man-of-war had carefully gauged the strength of the current, and followed the raft far out to the north-east.
Gold and silver, to the value of ￡17,000, went down with the Elingamite. Treasure-seekers have repeatedly tried to fish it up, but in vain.
 
WEAVING THE KAITAKA
Five hundred miles to the east of Banks’ Peninsula lie the pleasant group called the Chatham Islands. They owe their auspicious name to their luck in being discovered in 1790 by the Government ship Chatham. Otherwise they might have been named after Lord [212]Auckland, or Mr. Robert Campbell, or Stewart the sealer, as have others of our islands. They are fabled of old to have been, like Delos, floating isles, borne hither and thither by sea and wind. The Apollo who brought them to anchor was the demi-god Kahu. The myth, perhaps, had its origin in the powerful currents which are still a cause of anxiety to shipmasters navigating the seas round their shores. They are fertile spots, neither flat nor lofty, but altogether habitable. The soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold, neither large nor impossibly small—they are about two and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight,—the Chathams, one would think, should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. And, as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the Moriori, was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. The Moriori were Polynesians akin to, yet distinct from, the Maori. Perhaps they were the last separate remnant of some earlier immigrants to New Zealand; or it is possible that their canoes brought them from the South Seas to the Chathams direct; at any rate they found the little land to their liking, and living there undisturbed, increased till, a hundred years ago, they mustered some two thousand souls. Unlike the Maori, they were not skilled gardeners; but they knew how to cook fern-root, and how to render the poisonous karaka berries innocuous. Their rocks and reefs were nesting-places [213]for albatrosses and mutton-birds; so they had fowl and eggs in plenty. A large and very deep lagoon on their main island—said to be the crater of a volcano—swarmed with eels.
They were clever fishermen, and would put to sea on extraordinary rafts formed of flax sticks buoyed up by the bladders of the giant kelp. Their beaches were well furnished with shell-fish. Finally, the fur seal haunted their shores in numbers, and supplied them with the warmest of clothing. Indeed, though they could weave mantles of flax, and dye them more artistically than the Maori, they gradually lost the art: their sealskin mantles were enough for them. As the life of savages goes, theirs seems to have been, until eighty years ago, as happy as it was peaceful and absolutely harmless. For the Moriori did not fight among themselves, and having, so far as they knew, no enemies, knew not the meaning of war. They were rather expert at making simple tools of stone and wood, but had no weapons, or any use therefor.
Upon these altogether inoffensive and unprovocative islanders came a series of misfortunes which in a couple of decades wiped out most of the little race, broke its spirit, and doomed it to extinction. What had they done to deserve this—the fate of the Tasmanians? They were not unteachable and repulsive like the Tasmanians. Thomas Potts, a trained observer, has minutely described one of them, a survivor of their calamitous days. He saw in the Moriori a man [214]“robust in figure, tall of stature, not darker in colour perhaps than many a Maori, but of a dull, dusky hue, rather than of the rich brown” so common in the Maori. Prominent brows, almond eyes, and a curved, somewhat fleshy nose gave the face a Jewish cast. The eyes seemed quietly watchful—the eyes of a patient animal “not yet attacked, but preparing or prepared for defence.” Otherwise the man’s demeanour was quiet and stolid. Bishop Selwyn, too, who visited the Chathams in 1848, bears witness to the courteous and attractive bearing of the Moriori. They were not drunken, irreclaimably vicious, or especially slothful. They were simply ignorant, innocent, and kindly, and so unfitted for wicked times and a reign of cruelty.
White sealers and whalers coming in friendly guise began their destruction, exterminating their seals, scaring away their sea-fowl, infecting them with loathsome diseases. Worse was to come. In the sealing schooners casual Maori seamen visited the Chathams, and saw in them a nook as pleasant and defenceless as the city of Laish. One of these wanderers on his return home painted a picture of the group to an audience of the Ngatiawa tribe in words which Mr. Shand thus renders:—
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“There is an island out in the ocean not far from here to the eastward. It is full of birds—both land and sea-birds—of all kinds, some living in the peaty soil, with albatross in plenty on the outlying islands. There is abundance of sea and shell-fish; the lakes swarm with eels; and it is a land of the karaka. The inhabitants are very numerous, but they do not know how to fight, and have no weapons.”
 
“TE HONGI”
His hearers saw a vision of a Maori El Dorado! But how was it to be reached? In canoes they could not venture so far, nor did they know the way. Doubtless, however, they remembered how Stewart of the Elisabeth had carried Rauparaha and his warriors to Akaroa in the hold of his brig a few years before. Another brig, the Rodney, was in Cook’s Strait now, seeking a cargo of scraped flax. Her captain, Harewood, was not such a villain as Stewart; but if he could not be bribed he could be terrified—so thought the Ngatiawa. In Port Nicholson (Wellington harbour) lies a little islet with a patch of trees on it, like a tuft of hair on a shaven scalp. Nowadays it is used as a quarantine place for dogs and other doubtful immigrants. Thither the Ngatiawa decoyed Harewood and a boat’s crew, and then seizing the men, cajoled or frightened the skipper into promising to carry them across the sea to their prey. Whether Harewood made much ado about transporting the filibustering cannibals to the Chathams will probably never be known. He seems to have had some scruples, but they were soon overcome, either by fear or greed. Once the bargain was struck he performed his part of it without flinching. The work of transport was no light task. No less than nine hundred of the Maori of Cook’s Strait had resolved to take part in the enterprise, so much had Rauparaha’s freebooting exploits in the south inflamed and unsettled his tribe. To carry this invading horde [216]to the scene of their enterprise the Rodney had to make two trips. On the first of them the Maori were packed in the hold like the negroes on a slaver, and when water ran short suffered miseries of thirst. Had the Moriori known anything of war they might easily have repelled their enemies. As it was, the success of the invasion was prompt and complete. Without losing a man the Maori soon took possession of the Chathams and their inhabitants. The land was parcelled out among the new-comers, and the Moriori and their women tasted the bitterness of enslavement by insolent and brutal savages. They seem to have done all that submissiveness could do to propitiate their swaggering lords. But no submissiveness could save them from the cruelty of barbarians drunk with easy success. Misunderstandings between master and slave would be settled with a blow from a tomahawk. On at least two occasions there were massacres, the results either of passion or panic. In one of these fifty Moriori were killed; in the other, perhaps three times that number of all ages and sexes. On the second occasion the dead were laid out in a line on the sea-beach, parents and children together, so that the bodies touched each other. The dead were of course eaten; it is said that as many as fifty were baked in one oven. I have read, moreover, that the Maori coolly kept a number of their miserable slaves penned up, feeding them well, and killed them from time to time like sheep when butcher’s meat was wanted. This last story is, I should think, doubtful, for as the whole island was but one large slave-pen, [217]there could be no object in keeping victims shut up in a yard. The same story has been told of Rauparaha’s treatment of the islanders of Kapiti. But Kapiti is but a few miles from the m............