George L. Craik

“ And indeed, when we are told that the trees rise generally to the height of from eighty to a hundred feet, straight as a mast and without a branch, and are then crowned with tops of such umbrageous foliage that the rays of the sun, in endeavouring to pierce through them, can hardly make more than a dim twilight in the lonely recesses below, so that herbage cannot grow there, and the rank soil produces nothing but a thick spread of climbing and intertwisted underwood, we may conceive how imposing must be the gloomy grandeur of these gigantic and impenetrable groves. ”

“ The southern island, with the exception of a narrow strip along its northern shore, appears to be, in its interior, a mere chaos of mountains, and the region of perpetual winter; but even here, the declivities that slope down towards the sea are clothed, in many places to the water's edge, with gigantic and evergreen forests; and more protected nooks occasionally present themselves, overspread with the abundance of a teeming vegetation, and not to be surpassed in loveliness by what the land has anywhere else to show. ”

“ The New Zealanders conceive, also, that what we call a shooting star is ominous of the approaching dissolution of any one of their great chiefs who may be unwell when it is seen. Like the vulgar among ourselves, too, they have their man in the moon; who, they say, is one of their countrymen named Rona, who was taken up long ago, one night when he went to the well to fetch water.
Nicholas has given us, on the authority of his friend Duaterra, the most particular account that has appeared of the inferior deities of New Zealand. ”

“ But if those who have been accustomed to the comforts of civilization have not infrequently felt the influence of the seductions which a barbarous condition offers to an excited imagination, it may well be conceived that, to the man who has been born a savage, and nurtured in all the feelings and habits of that state of society, they must address themselves with still more irresistible effect. ”

“ The New Zealanders make only two meals in the day, one in the morning and another at sunset; but their voracity when they do eat is often very great. Nicholas remarks that the chiefs and their followers, with whom he made the voyage from Port Jackson, used, while in the ship, to seize upon every thing they could lay their hands upon in the shape of food. In consequence of this habit of consuming an extraordinary quantity of food, a New Zealander, with all his powers of endurance in other respects, suffers dreadfully when he has not the usual means of satisfying his hunger. ”

“ Most of the European visitors who have hitherto given us an account of the country have mixed chiefly with the higher classes of its inhabitants, and consequently learned but little with regard to the condition of the great body of the population, except in so far as it affected, or was affected by, that of the chiefs. Hence the impression they have taken up that theft in New Zealand is looked upon as one of the worst of crimes, and always punished with death. It is so, we have no doubt, when committed by one of the common people upon any of the privileged class. ”

“ Although there are no written laws in New Zealand, all these matters are, no doubt, regulated by certain universally understood rules, liberal enough in all probability, in the license which they allow to the tyranny of the privileged class, but still fixing some boundaries to its exercise, which will accordingly be but rarely overstepped. Thus, the power which the chief seems to enjoy of depriving any of his slaves of life may be limited to certain occasions only ”

“ We have still, doubtless, to lament that the game of blood occasions, whenever it is played, so terrible a waste of human life and happiness; but even the displacement of that brute force, and those other merely animal impulses, by which it used to be mainly directed, and the substitution of regulating principles of a comparatively intellectual and unimpassioned nature, may be considered as indicating, even here, a triumph of civilization. ”

“ Machinery, the monopolizing power of our age, is not well fitted to the production of striking effects in this particular branch of the arts. Fine carving is displayed, as in the works of Gibbons, by a rich and natural variety, altogether opposed to that faultless and inflexible regularity of operation which is the perfection of a machine. Hence the lathe, with all the miraculous capabilities it has been made to evolve, can never here come into successful competition with the chisel, in so far as the quality and spirit of the performance are concerned ”

“ To recur to the practices of a higher state of civilization, our own custom, which existed as late as the last century, of exposing the heads of traitors, although meant as a warning, in the same way as hanging in chains, was perhaps a relic of those ferocious ages when it was not considered mean and brutal to carry revenge beyond the grave. ”

“ Probably the only case in which the New Zealander looks upon theft as a crime is when it is accompanied by a breach of hospitality, or is committed upon those who have, in the customary and understood manner, entrusted themselves to his friendship and honour. In any other circumstances, he will scarcely hold himself disgraced by any act of depredation which he can contrive to accomplish without detection; however much the fear of not escaping with impunity may often deter him from making the attempt. ”

“ It is impossible that the business of war can be so corrupting to those engaged in it when it is chiefly a contest of skill, as when it is wholly a contest of passion. Nor is it calculated in the one form to occupy the imagination of a people, as it will do in the other. The evil is therefore mitigated by the introduction of those arts which to many may appear aggravations of this curse of mankind.
Rutherford does not take any notice of the pas, or as they have been called, eppas, or hippahs, [CN] which are found in so many of the New Zealand villages. ”

“ On Butler interfering and begging that their lives might be spared, the New Zealanders replied: "They are nothing but slaves and thieves; they look like bad men, and are very ragged; they do not belong to you, and we think they are some of King George's bad cookees." ”

“ Cruise even informs us that when a son of one of the chiefs died in Marsden's house, in New South Wales, it required the interposition of that gentleman's authority to prevent some of the boy's countrymen, who were with him, from killing a few of their slaves, in honour of their deceased friend. On other occasions, it is likely that the life of the slave can only be taken when he has been convicted of some delinquency; although, as the chief is the sole judge of his criminality, he will find this, it may be thought, but a slight protection. ”

“ With our habits and improved ideas of morality, we see in theft both a trespass upon the arbitrary enactments of society, which demands the correction of the civil magistrate, and a violation of that natural equity which is independent of all political arrangements, and would make it unfair and wrong for one man to take to himself what belongs to another, although there were no such thing as what is commonly called a government in existence. ”

“ Bishop Newton, in his commentary on the scriptural account of Balaam being sent for to curse the Israelites, says, "It was a superstitious ceremony in use among the heathens, to devote their enemies to destruction at the beginning of their wars; as if the gods would enter into their passions, and were as unjust and partial as themselves."
The demeanour of most of the New Zealand priests is something so entirely different from that observed by the ministers of religion in civilized countries that it is not surprising Rutherford should have failed to recognise them as belonging to that order. ”

“ Every more remarkable occasion of their rude and turbulent life seems to have its appropriate song. The planting of their potatoes, the gathering in of the crop, the commencement of the battle, the interment of the dead, are all celebrated, each by its peculiar chorus, as well as, probably, most of their other customary excitements, both of mirth and of mourning. ”

“ But one of the most remarkable among this order of men seems to be Tamanhena [BX] , the priest of the head of the Shukehanga, who is believed to have absolute command over the winds and waves. Marsden met with this dignitary on his second visit to New Zealand; and found that, in addition to being a priest, he was in the habit of acting as a pilot, a profession with which the other suited very well, as by virtue of his sacred character he had the power of keeping the winds and waves quiet whenever he chose to put to sea. ”

“ The common people generally sleep in the open air, in a sitting posture, and covered by their mats, all but the head; which has been described as giving them the appearance of so many hay-cocks or beehives.
The house of the chief is generally, as Rutherford found it to be in the present case, the largest in the village; but every village has, in addition to the dwelling-houses of which it consists, a public storehouse, or repository of the common stock of sweet potatoes, which is a still larger structure than the habitation of the chief. ”

“ I assured him that he should have one, as soon as one could be got for him. He replied it would be of no use to him to send a blacksmith when he was dead; and that he was at present in the greatest distress: his wooden spades were all broke, and he had not an axe to make any more; his canoes were all broke, and he had not a nail or a gimlet to mend them with; his potato grounds were uncultivated, and he had not a hoe to break them up with, nor a tool to employ his people; and that, for want of cultivation, he and his people would have nothing to eat. ”

“ In savage countries the spirit of war is very much a spirit of personal hostility; and both because of this, and from the state of society not admitting of the erection of expensive public memorials which elsewhere, or in another age, are employed to preserve the renown of military exploits, the barbarian victor generally celebrates his triumph on the body of his slain enemy, in disfiguring which he first exercises his ingenuity, and afterwards in converting it into a permanent trophy of his prowess. ”

“ If this brokenness and inequality of surface oppose difficulties in the way of agricultural improvement, the variety and striking contrasts thereby produced must be often at least highly picturesque; and all, accordingly, who have visited New Zealand, agree in extolling the mingled beauty and grandeur which are profusely spread over the more favoured parts of the country, and are not altogether wanting even where the general look of the coast is most desolate and uninviting. ”

“ No doubt whatever can exist as to the relationship of the New Zealanders to the numerous other tribes of the same complexion, by whom nearly all the islands of the South Sea are peopled, and who, in physical conformation, language, religion, institutions, and habits, evidently constitute only one great family. ”

“ One of the arts in which the New Zealanders most excel is that of carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt, grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity which, especially when we consider their miserably imperfect tools, it is impossible to behold without admiration. ”

“ The New Zealand artist has no lathe to compete with; but neither has he even those ordinary hand-tools which every civilized country has always afforded. The only instruments he has to cut with are rudely fashioned of stone or bone. ”

“ The custom of marking the skin, called tattooing, is one of the most widely-diffused practices of savage life, having been found, even in modern times, to exist, in one modification or another, not only in most of the inhabited lands of the Pacific, from New Zealand as far north as the Sandwich Isles, but also among many of the aboriginal tribes both of Africa and America. ”

“ But in the mind of the New Zealander these simple notions of right and wrong have been warped, and, as it were, suffocated, by a multitude of unnatural and monstrous inventions, which have grown up along with them from his very birth. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of this hypothesis, it is certain that in some parts of New Zealand the natives are much fairer than in others. Cook remarks, in the account of his first voyage, that the people about the Bay of Islands seemed darker than those he had seen further to the south; and their colour generally is afterwards described as varying from a pretty deep black to a yellowish or olive tinge. In like manner, Marsden states that the people in the neighbourhood of the Shukehanga are much fairer than those on the east coast. ”