The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890

by Alexander Sutherland

  Matters were becoming serious, when the Ministry discovered an ingenious device for obtaining money. According to British law, if a man is unable to obtain from the Government what it owes him, he sues for it in the Supreme Court; and then, if this Court decides in his favour, it orders the money to be paid, quite independently of any Appropriation Act, out of the sums that may be lying in the Treasury. In their emergency, the Ministry applied to the banks for a loan of money; five of them refused, but the sixth agreed to lend forty thousand pounds. With this the Government servants were paid, and then the bank demanded its money from the Government; but the Government had no authority from Parliament to pay any money, and could not legally pay it. The bank then brought its action at law. The Supreme Court gave its order, and the money was paid to the bank out of the Treasury. Thus a means had been discovered of obtaining all the money that was required without asking the consent of Parliament. Throughout the year 1865 the salaries of officers were obtained in this way; but in 1866 the Upper House, seeing that it was being beaten, offered to hold a conference. Each House made concessions to the other, the Tariff Bill was passed, with some alterations, the Appropriation Bill was then agreed to in the ordinary way, and the “Deadlock” came to an end.

  3. The Darling Grant.—But, in its train, other troubles followed; for the English authorities were displeased with Sir Charles Darling for allowing the Government to act as it did. They showed how he might have prevented it, and, to mark their dissatisfaction, they recalled him in 1866. He bitterly complained of this harsh treatment; and the Assembly, regarding him as, in some measure, a martyr to the cause of the people, determined to recompense him for his loss of salary. In the Appropriation Act of 1867 they therefore passed a grant of £20,000 to Lady Darling, intending it for the use of her husband. The Upper House owed no debt of gratitude to Sir Charles, and, accordingly, it once more threw out the Appropriation Bill. Again there was the same bitter dispute, and again the public creditors were obliged to sue for their money in the Supreme Court. In a short time four thousand five hundred such pretended actions were laid, the Government making no defence, and the order being given in each case that the money should be paid.

  In 1866 the new Governor—Viscount Canterbury—arrived; but the struggle was still continued, till, in 1868, Sir Charles Darling informed MʻCulloch that Lady Darling would decline to receive the money, as he was receiving instead five thousand pounds as arrears of salary and a lucrative position in England. The Upper House then passed the Appropriation Bill, and the contest came to an end.

  4. Payment of Members.—But they had other things to quarrel about. The working men of the colony thought that they never would get fair treatment in regard to the laws until working men were themselves in Parliament. But that could not be, so long as they had to leave their trades and spend their time in making laws while getting nothing for it. Hence they were resolved on having all members of Parliament paid, and they elected persons to the Lower House who were in favour of that principle. But the better-off people sent persons into the Upper House who were against it. Thus for twenty years a struggle took place, but in the end the working men carried their point; and it was settled that every member of Parliament should receive three hundred pounds a year. The two Houses also quarrelled about the manner in which the land was to be sold; the Lower House being anxious to put it into the hands of industrious people who were likely to work on it as farmers, even though they could pay very little for it; the Upper House preferring that it should be sold to the people who offered the most money for it. On this and other questions in dispute the Lower House gained the victory.

  The Town Hall, Melbourne.

  5. Exhibitions.—It was not till the year 1880 that all these contentions were set at rest, but from that time the colony passed into a period of peace, during which it made the most astonishing progress in all directions. That progress was indicated in a most decided way by the exhibitions held in the colony. It had from time to time in previous years held inter-colonial exhibitions at which all the colonies had met in friendly competition. But in 1880, and again in 1888, Victoria invited all the world to exhibit their products at her show. A magnificent building was erected in one of the parks of Melbourne, and behind it were placed acres of temporary wooden erections, and the whole was filled with twenty acres of exhibits. A similar show, held in 1888, was much larger, and helped, by its fine collection of pictures, its grand displays of machinery, its educational courts, its fine orchestral music, and so on, in a hundred ways to stimulate and develop the minds of the people. During recent years Victoria has been very busy in social legislation. While enjoying peace under the direction of a coalition Government with Mr. Duncan Gillies and Mr. Alfred Deakin at its head, the colony has tried experiments in regulating the liquor traffic; in closing shops at an early hour; in irrigating the waterless plains of the north-west, and in educating farmers and others into the most approved methods of managing their businesses. What is to be the eventual result no one can as yet very definitely prophesy. But the eyes of many thoughtful persons throughout the world are at present turned to Victoria to see how those schemes are working which have been so zealously undertaken for the good of the people.

  The Port of Melbourne.

  Up till 1890 the progress of the colony was astonishing. Its central half forms a network of railways. Its agriculture and its trades have doubled themselves every few years; and though a period of restless activity and progress was in 1890 followed by a time of severe depression, the community, like all the other Australian colonies, has great times of prosperity in store for it.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  THE TIMES OF THE MAORIS.

  1. The Maoris.—So far as we know, the original inhabitants of New Zealand were a dark-skinned race called Maoris, a people lithe and handsome of body, though generally plain of features: open, frank and happy in youth, grave and often melancholy in their older years.

  They numbered forty thousand in the North Island, where the warmth of the climate suited them, but in the South Island there were only two thousand. They were divided into tribes, who fought fiercely with one another; cooked and ate the bodies of the slain, and carried off the vanquished to be slaves. They dwelt in houses sometimes neatly built of wooden slabs, more often of upright poles with broad grass leaves woven between them. The roofs were of grass, plaited and thatched.

  To these abodes the entrances were only some two or three feet high, and after crawling through, the visitor who entered at night would see the master of the house, his wives, his children, his slaves, indeed all his household, to the number of twenty or thirty, lying on mats in rows down either side, with their heads to the walls and their feet to the centre, leaving a path down the middle. In these rooms they slept, with a fire burning all night, till, what with the smoke and the breaths of so many people, the place was stifling. The roofs were only four feet higher than the ground outside, but, then, inside, the earth was hollowed a foot or two to make the floor so that a man could just stand upright.

  These houses were gathered in little villages, often pleasantly situated beside a stream, or on the sea-shore; but sometimes for defence they were placed on a hill and surrounded by high fences with ditches and earthen walls so as to make a great stronghold of the kind they called a “pah”. The trenches were sometimes twenty or thirty feet deep; but generally the pah was built so that a rapid river or high precipices would defend two or three sides of it, while only the sides not so guarded by nature were secured by ditches and a double row of palisades. Within these enclosures stages were erected behind the palisades so that the fighting men could hurl stones and spears and defy an attacking party.

  A Maori Dwelling.

  2. Maori Customs.—Round their villages and pahs they dug up the soil and planted the sweet potato, and the taro, which is the root of a kind of arum lily; they also grew the gourd called calabash, from whose hard rind they made pots and bowls and dishes. When the crops of sweet potato an
d taro were over they went out into the forest and gathered the roots of certain sorts of ferns, which they dried and kept for their winter food. They netted fish and eels; they caught sharks with hook and line and dried their flesh in the sun. To enjoy these meals in comfort they had a broad verandah round their houses which formed an open and generally pleasant dining-room, where they gathered in family circles bound by much affection for one another. The girls especially were sweet and pretty; their mild manners, their soft and musical voices, the long lashes of their drooping eyes, with the gloss of their olive-tinted skins made them perfect types of dusky beauty. Grown a little older they were by no means so attractive, and then when married they deeply scored their faces by the process of tattooing.

  The men had their faces, hips, and thighs tattooed, that is, all carved in wavy lines which were arranged in intricate patterns. The women tattooed only their lips, chins, and eyelids, but often smeared their faces with red ochre, and soaked their hair with oil. Men and women wore round the waist a kilt of beautifully woven flax, and over the shoulders a mat of the same material. They were expert sailors, and built themselves large canoes which thirty or forty men would drive forward, keeping time with their paddles. Their large war canoes were sixty and seventy feet long, and would carry 100 men.

  Thus they were by no means uncivilised, but their condition was in some respects most barbarous. In person they were dirty, and in manners proud and arrogant. They were easily offended, and never forgave what they considered as an injury or insult. This readiness to take offence and to avenge themselves caused the neighbouring tribes to be for ever at war. They fought with great bravery, slaughtered each other fiercely, and ate the bodies. Sometimes they killed their captives or slaves in order to hold a cannibal feast.

  According to their own traditions they had not been always in these islands. Their ancestors came from afar, and each tribe had its own legendary account. But they all agreed that they came from an island away to the north in the Pacific, which they called Hawaiki, and there is little doubt but that some hundreds of years ago their forefathers must in truth have emigrated from some of the South Sea Islands. Whether they found natives on the islands and killed them all, we cannot now discover. There are no traces of any earlier people, but the Maoris in their traditions say that people were found on the islands and slain and eaten by the invaders.

  One tribe declared that long ago in far-off Hawaiki a chief hated another, but was too weak to do him harm. He fitted out a canoe for a long voyage, and suddenly murdered the son of his enemy. He then escaped on board the canoe with his followers and sailed away for ever from his home. This legend declared how after many adventures he at length reached New Zealand. Another legend relates that in Hawaiki the people were fighting, and a tribe being beaten was forced to leave the island. Sorrowfully it embarked in two canoes and sailed away out upon the tossing ocean, till, directed by the voice of their god sounding from the depths below them, they landed on the shores of New Zealand.

  How many centuries they lived and multiplied there it is impossible to say, as they had no means of writing and recording their history.

  3. Tasman.—The earliest we know of them for certain is in the journal of Tasman, who writes under the date of 13th December, 1642, that he had that day seen shores never before beheld by white men. He was then holding eastward after his visit to Tasmania, and the shore he saw was the mountainous land in the North Island. He rounded what we now call Cape Farewell, and anchored in a fine bay, whose green and pleasant shores were backed by high snow-capped mountains. Several canoes came off from the beach filled by Maoris, who lay about a stone’s throw distant and sounded their war trumpets. The Dutch replied by a flourish of their horns. For several days the Maoris would come no nearer, but on the sixth they paddled out with seven canoes and surrounded both vessels. Tasman noticed that they were crowding in a somewhat threatening manner round one of his ships, the Heemskirk, and he sent a small boat with seven men to warn the captain to be on his guard. When the Maoris saw these seven men without weapons sailing past their canoes they fell on them, instantly killed three and began to drag away their bodies; no doubt to be eaten. The other four Dutchmen, by diving and swimming, escaped and reached the ship half dead with fright. Then with shouts the whole line of Maori canoes advanced to attack the ships; but a broadside startled them. They were stupefied for a moment at the flash and roar of the cannon and the crash of the wood-work of their canoes; then they turned and fled, carrying with them, however, one of the bodies. Tasman sailed down into Cook Strait, which he very naturally took to be a bay, the weather being too thick for him to see the passage to the south-east. He then returned and coasted northwards to the extreme point of New Zealand, which he called Cape Maria Van Diemen, probably after the wife of that Governor of Batavia who had sent out the expedition. Tasman called the lands he had thus discovered “New Zealand,” after that province of Holland which is called Zealand, or the Sea-land. The bay in which he had anchored was called Murderers’ or Massacre Bay.

  4. Captain Cook.—For more than a hundred years New Zealand had no white men as visitors. It was in 1769 that Captain Cook, on his way home from Tahiti, steering to the south-west in the hope of discovering new lands, saw the distant hills of New Zealand. Two days later he landed on the east coast of the North Island, a little north of Hawke Bay. There lay the little ship the Endeavour at anchor, with its bulging sides afloat on a quiet bay, in front a fertile but steeply sloping shore with a pah on the crown of a hill, and a few neat little houses by the side of a rapid stream. In the evening Cook, Banks, and other gentlemen took the pinnace and rowed up the streamlet. They landed, leaving some boys in charge of the boat, and advanced towards a crowd of Maoris, making friendly signs as they approached. The Maoris ran away, but some of them seeing their chance made a dash at the boys in the boat and tried to kill them. The boys pushed off, and dropped down the stream; the Maoris chased them, determined on mischief. Four of them being very murderous, the coxswain fired a musket over their heads. They were startled, but continued to strike at the boys with wooden spears. Seeing the danger the coxswain levelled his musket and shot one of the Maoris dead on the spot. The others fled, and Cook, hearing the report of the gun, hurried back and at once returned to the ship.

  Over and over again Cook did everything he could devise to secure the friendship of these people; but they always seemed to have only one desire, and that was to kill and eat the white visitors. One day five canoes came out to chase the Endeavour as she was sailing along the coast. Another time nine canoes densely filled with men sailed after her, paddling with all their might to board the vessel. In these and many other cases cannon had to be fired over their heads to frighten them before they would desist from their attempt to capture the ship. At one bay, the Maoris made friends and went on board the Endeavour to sell provisions, but when all was going forward peaceably they suddenly seized a boy and pulled him into their canoe. They were paddling away with him when some musket shots frightened them, and in the confusion the boy dived and swam back.

  Cook sailed completely round the North Island, charting the shores with great care, often landing, sometimes finding tribes who made friends, more often finding tribes whose insolence or treachery led to the necessity of firing upon them with small shot. If he had only known the customs of these people he would have understood that to be friendly with one tribe meant that the next tribe would murder and eat them for revenge. He then sailed round the South Island, landing less frequently, however, till at length he took his leave of New Zealand at what he called Cape Farewell, and sailed away to Australia. He had been nearly six months exploring the coasts of these islands, and that in a very small vessel. During this time he had left pigs and goats, fowls and geese to increase in the forests, where they soon multiplied, especially the pigs. Potatoes and turnips were left with many tribes, who quickly learnt how to grow them, so that after ten or twelve years had passed away these vegetables became the chief f
ood of all the Maoris.

  5. French Visitors.—Whilst Cook was sailing round the North Island, a French vessel anchored in a bay of that island in search of fresh water. The Ngapuhi tribe received them with pleasure and gave them all the assistance in their power, but some of them stole a boat. The captain, named De Surville, then seized one of the chiefs and put him in irons. The boat not being given up, he burnt a village and sailed to South America, the chief dying on the road.

  Three years later in 1772 came another Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, with two ships; this time for the express purpose of making discoveries. He sailed up the west coast, rounded the North Cape and anchored in the Bay of Islands. He landed and made friends with the Ngapuhi tribe and took his sick sailors ashore. The Maoris brought him plenty of fish, and Du Fresne made them presents in return. For a month the most pleasant relations continued, the Maoris often sleeping on board and the French officers spending the night in the Maori houses. One day Captain Marion went ashore with sixteen others to enjoy some fishing. At night they did not return. Captain Crozet, who was second in command, thought they had chosen to sleep ashore, but the next day he sent a boat with twelve men to find where they were. These men were scattering carelessly through the woods when suddenly a dense crowd of Maoris, who had concealed themselves, attacked and killed all the Frenchmen but one. He who escaped was hidden behind some bushes, and he saw his comrades brained one after another; then he saw the fierce savages cut their bodies in pieces, and carry them away in baskets to be eaten. When the Maoris were gone he crept along the shore and swam to the ship, which he reached half dead with terror. Crozet landed sixty men, and the natives gathered for a fight; but the Frenchmen merely fired volley after volley into a solid mass of Maori warriors, who, stupefied at the flash and roar, were simply slaughtered as they stood. Crozet burnt both the Maori villages and sailed away. In later times the Maoris explained that the French had desecrated their religious places by taking the carved ornaments out of them for firewood.