Pioneers in Australasia

by Harry Johnston

Amongst the food supplies of the natives were observed occasionally "lobsters" (which were probably langoustes, see p. 190), besides various wild birds, which the Maoris either roasted by fastening them upon a small stick stuck into the ground and inclined towards the open fire, or baked by putting them into the ground with hot stones. Like the other Polynesians, these Maoris were given to displaying their sorrow, either for the death of a relation, or for some matter of mere personal pique, not only by shedding quantities of tears and singing mournful songs, but by cutting their arms, faces, chests, and thighs with sharp-edged shells, so that in the middle of their paroxysm of grief their bodies were covered with blood. Many of the natives met with were scarred from head to foot with old "grief marks".

Some of the promontories stretching out into the sea were noteworthy for the fortified villages, called by the natives eppah or pah. "The best engineer in Europe could not have chosen a situation better adapted to enable a small number to defend themselves against a greater. The steepness of the cliffs renders it wholly inaccessible from the water, which encloses it on three sides; and, to the land, it is fortified by a ditch and a bank raised on the inside: from the top of the bank to the bottom of the ditch is 22 feet; the ditch on the outside is 14 feet deep, and its breadth is in proportion. The whole seemed to have been executed with great judgment; and there had been a row of pickets or palisades, both on the top of the bank and along the brink of the ditch on the outside; those on the outside had been driven very deep into the ground, and were inclined towards the ditch, so as to project over it; but of these the thickest posts only were left, and upon them there were evident marks of fire, so that the place had probably been taken and destroyed by an enemy."

The weakness of these forts as regards standing a siege was that in none of them did there seem to have been wells sunk or any provision made for storing water in large quantities. And although always built near a stream, the besieged would be obliged every now and then to elude the vigilance of their enemies at night-time and renew their supplies of water by fetching it up to the fort from the stream below. But otherwise these forts were provisioned with quantities of fern roots and dried fish. The people's only weapons seemed to be lances, pikes, and halberds of wood, pointed sometimes with jade[77] or bone, and heavy jade clubs and axes; but they had no bows and arrows or slings, and very few weapons that they could throw.

On 20 November, 1769, Cook discovered a river at the head of a great inlet, which he named the Thames, and in this region of the North Island he noticed the splendid kauri pines.[78] One of these he judged to be 89 feet from the root to the first branch, and perhaps 200 feet high altogether. Its girth near the ground was nearly 20 feet. In the most northern part of the North Island they met with the paper-mulberry tree growing in the native plantations, and here they frequently found a kind of celery, which was eagerly gathered by the seamen as a vegetable addition to their diet.

In December, 1769, they rounded the northernmost promontory of New Zealand, which Cook at once identified with Cape Maria Van Diemen of Tasman's discovery, and perhaps realized then for the first time that the Terra Australis along which he had been coasting was none other than the New Zealand discovered by Tasman. The natives in this northernmost part gave a very interesting description, through Tupia the interpreter (when asked if they knew of any other land besides New Zealand), and said that far away to the north-west there was a country of great extent, which they called Ulimaroa, and which had been reached by some of their people in a very large canoe after a month's sail. The most striking feature to them in this distant land was that its inhabitants possessed and ate pigs, and they called these pigs by the widespread name, bua. It is probable that the land to which they alluded was Fiji; for though New Caledonia answers better to the description, the people possessed no pigs when this large island was first visited by Cook.

After rounding Cape Maria Van Diemen, the Endeavour sailed southwards along the west coast of the North Island and sighted Mount Egmont, which is 8340 feet high. The appearance of this mountain rising straight up from the sea coast was superb, and even although it was the middle of the New Zealand summer its summit was covered with snow. They next entered the broad gulf between the Taranaki Peninsula and the South Island. The ship came to an anchor in Queen Charlotte Sound. On the waters of this beautiful inlet they saw floating the dead body of a woman. Landing shortly afterwards, and getting into friendly relations with a small family of Maoris, they enquired about the dead body of the woman, and were told that it was one of their relations who had died a natural death, and, according to their custom, they had tied a stone to the body and had thrown it into the sea.

"This family when we came on shore, was employed in dressing some provisions: the body of a dog was at this time buried in their oven, and many provision baskets stood near it. Having cast our eyes carelessly into one of these as we passed it, we saw two bones pretty cleanly picked, which did not seem to be the bones of a dog, and which, upon a nearer examination, we discovered to be those of a human body. At this sight we were struck with horror, though it was only a confirmation of what we had heard many times since we arrived upon this coast. As we could have no doubt but the bones were human, neither could he have any doubt but that the flesh which covered them had been eaten. They were found in a provision basket; the flesh that remained appeared manifestly to have been dressed by fire, and in the gristles at the end were the marks of the teeth which had gnawed them. To put an end, however, to conjecture, founded upon circumstances and appearances, we directed Tupia to ask what bones they were; and the Indians, without the least hesitation, answered: 'the bones of a man'. They were then asked what was become of the flesh, and they replied that they had eaten it. 'But,' said Tupia, 'why did you not eat the body of the woman which we saw floating upon the water?' 'The woman', said they, 'died of disease; besides, she was our relation, and we eat only the bodies of our enemies who are killed in battle.'"

Upon enquiry who the man was whose bones had been found, they told the party from the Endeavour that about five days before a boat belonging to their enemies came into the bay with many persons on board, and that this man was one of seven whom they had killed. "Though stronger evidence of this horrible practice prevailing among the inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give. One of us asked if they had any human bones with the flesh remaining upon them, and upon their answering us that all had been eaten, we affected to disbelieve that the bones were human, and said that they were the bones of a dog; upon which one of the Indians[79] with some eagerness took hold of his own forearm, and, thrusting it towards us, said that the bone which Mr. Banks held in his hand had belonged to that part of a human body. At the same time, to convince us that the flesh had been eaten, he took hold of his own arm with his teeth and made show of eating. He also bit and gnawed the bone which Mr. Banks had taken, drawing it through his mouth, and showing, by signs, that it had afforded a delicious repast."

Elsewhere along this coast human bones with the flesh on were often offered to Cook and his men for sale.[80]

On 30 January, 1770, on the shores of Queen Charlotte Sound, Lieutenant James Cook hoisted the British flag and took possession of the two great islands of New Zealand in the name of His Majesty, King George III—of the two islands, for they had already learnt from the natives the existence of Cook's Strait, which separated the North Island from the South, and which would lead them back into the eastern sea. The principal person to give this information was an old man named Topaa. He was asked if he had ever seen such a vessel before as the Endeavour, and whether white men had ever visited the land in the memory of the people. Topaa replied in the negative, but added that his ancestors had told him that there had once arrived (probably on the North Island) four men who had come in a small vessel from a distant country—Ulimaroa—but upon the four men landing they were all killed. This additional reference to Ulimaroa—which was either Fiji or the New Hebrides—is very interesting, as it would show that it has been possible for natives, probably of Melanesian type, to reach New Zealand in bygone times, and, this being the case, it would explain why succeeding French expeditions thought that in the Southern Island they detected a negroid type of New Zealander, altogether uglier and inferior in physique to the Polynesian Maori. It seems possible that the Polynesian Maoris were preceded by a dark-skinned race, who destroyed most of the Moas and other large flightless birds which had apparently become nearly or quite extinct before the Maori colonization took place.