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packet beating against a head-wind, ten miles to the southward, and hopeless of getting in. Anxious to

oblige the good people of Sydney, as well as to get the mail-bags for New Zealand, the captain immediately ran down to this most laggard packet, and, taking her in tow, (for which he was repaid with three hearty cheers,) we soon re-anchored with her off Sydney. Here we waited until the next morning, and having got whatbeing nearly seventeen weeks old-could hardly be called the "news," the Inflexible made a fresh departure with fine weather and a smooth sea.

A capacious cabin being allotted to me, and thus having privacy at my command, I determined to devote a few hours every day to learning something of the country I was about to visit. Not being stinted in amount of baggage, I had brought a small box of books, among which were sundry Parliamentary blue-books, one of which alone contains upwards of 1,100 pages, and weighs, as expressed on its cover, "under eight pounds!"-a mass of colonial lore which had been thrown at my head on leaving England by an M.P. friend who, in common with the majority of his brother senators, probably looked upon these volumes relating to savage countries as so much waste paper, and had of course never opened them. They stood me in good stead now; and perhaps I cannot employ myself better, as we steam towards New Zealand, than in preparing, as well as I can, a digest of the information so gathered-furnishing a very imperfect sketch of the history of the colony up to the present day, and serving as an introduction to my journal.

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The group of islands constituting New Zealand are in number three, two of them as large perhaps as Ireland, with a smaller one at the southern extremity. They were first discovered by Tasman in 1642; but he experienced so rough a reception from the natives, and was so alarmed at the big fierce fellows with loud voices. and long strides, as to leave him little taste for further exploration; and New Zealand was not honoured by another visit from a white face until the year 1770, when Captain Cook circumnavigated the islands, found good harbours for large shipping in the strait called after himself, which divides the two northern islands, and, landing, took possession of the country in the name of the king of England; his instructions being to do so with the consent of the natives, if there were any, and, if there were none, as first discoverer and possessor. In a subsequent visit he landed at several spots, conferring an everlasting benefit on the natives by sowing European garden-seeds, potatoes, cabbages, onions, maize, and other vegetables, which have never since failed.

The first rough pioneers of civilization among the Maoris, were undoubtedly the English whalers and sealers from New South Wales. Others of the same craft but of different nations followed, who, locating themselves on the coast of Cook's Straits, gradually improved their communications with the natives, and pursued a rude but lucrative trade in what is called shore-whaling, in contradistinction to deep sea-fishingthe whalers merely following the fish in boats from their settlements, where the buildings and implements for

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THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS.

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cutting in" and "trying out" were established. The Sydney merchants gave employment to these land whalers, their vessels carrying away the oil, and leaving money, clothes, arms, and, alas! rum, in payment. These rough-and-ready settlers amalgamated in some degree with the turbulent Maoris-half-warriors half-fishermen of the coasts. Some of them married the daughters and sisters of native chiefs, thereby securing the powerful protection of the latter; others contracted alliances of a less formal nature with native women, and a half-caste breed sprung up to cement the alliance between the races.

They themselves

When absent in

In the numerous conflicts between native tribes, the Englishmen sometimes sided with that which had shown them favour, or was connected with them by marriage or traffic; and their furious bravery, their fire-arms— then rare in the country-and the formidable weapons of their trade, the harpoon, the axe, the lance, and the whale-spade, made the fortunes of the party against which they fought to kick the beam. sometimes suffered no trifling reverses. their boats in pursuit of fish, some foraging party of hostile Maoris would rush upon the settlements, burn down the huts and whaling stages, and carry off property, women, and children—not perhaps so much out of enmity to the whites, as in blind retaliation on the tribe among which they resided. The utter want, or rather absence, of law, or of any superior example of conduct, and the periodical plenty of strong waters, gave rise to and perpetuated scenes of drunken riot, such as, knowing the actors, one can easily conceive, but which to describe would be impossible.

Such being the European dramatis persone in the first scene of New Zealand civilized, "enter to them❞— not "two murderers," (although there were doubtless a a few of that trade,)-but a straggling host of runaway sailors, military deserters, escaped convicts from New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, sawyers and lumberers, adventurers and evasives of every sort; and, giving the natural Maori every credit for ferocity, villany, and blood-thirstiness, I fancy it will not be denied that his maiden impressions of the European scale of morals and polite arts, as furnished by these specimens, could not by possibility rise above mediocrity. Indeed, the brutal drunkenness and reckless debauchery of the Pakehas** actually " astonished the natives," if it did not revolt them; for they are sober by nature and by practice even now. Moreover, on those especial points on which the New Zealander was supposed to excelnamely, the merciless and bloody onslaughts on the unarmed and unsuspecting adversary, where neither sex nor age was a shield-there were not wanting instances in which Englishmen distinguished themselves above the savage, lending their vessels, boats, arms, and personal aid through every stage of enormity short perhaps of eating what they had killed. Tradition seems to clear them of that consummation; but, as for me, I see no reason for stopping dead short at that particular point; and, since a certain master of a vessel named Stewart has been convicted by notoriety of furnishing means of transport, arms, ammunition, and his own countenance. and assistance, in the most truculent and destructive

*Foreigners.

WHALERS AND SEALERS.

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descent of one tribe upon another that ever was heard of even up to that somewhat advanced stage of the ceremony, cooking the bodies of the slain, to which purpose he obligingly devoted his ship's coppers; it would be unjust to him to doubt that he joined in the general jollification, and that, although not an habitual cannibal, he, on this occasion, mangea son homme tout comme un autre-as the French say. This monster met with the mockery of a trial at Sydney, and escaped through some flaw in the proceedings.

If therefore, as I have said, the Aborigines were not impressed with exalted notions of the white man's purity of conduct, nor of the code that ruled his morals, there was no mistake about the respect they entertained for the thews and sinews, the powers of endurance, the pluck and spirit, as well as the skill and perseverance of their pale-faced visitors. Pale, by-the-bye, is a most inapplicable epithet as conferred on these rough denizens of the coast and wave; for such as I saw were bronzed, burnt, blown, and bloated by sun, wind, sea, and rum, to such a shade of red-brown that, were it not for the wicked blue eyes and wickeder oath, and for the rolling gait acquired on the sea and retained on land by seamen, a traveller might easily mistake his fellow-Saxon for an untattooed Maori. In some of these whale-chases the Englishmen were assisted by young natives, not only in pulling the boats, but occasionally in "fastening" to a fish; and oftentimes, when one of these giants of the deep got embayed on à lee shore near the native settlements, a boat entirely manned by them would harpoon him, and make signals for the English fishermen to come up and do

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