MISSION STATION AT TANGITERORIA, NEW ZEALAND.
"Cook Strait commemorates the great navigator who was killed on the Sandwich Islands. He landed here in 1769, and took possession of the country in the name of England. He made five visits altogether to New Zealand, and introduced pigs, potatoes, sheep, goats, and other animals and vegetables."
"Hadn't Tasman already taken the country for Holland?" said Frank.
"No," replied the Doctor, "he did not set foot at all in New Zealand. He anchored in a bay in South Island, next to that in which the town of Nelson now stands, and had an encounter with the natives who opposed his going on shore. He lost four men in the fight, named the place Massacre Bay, in memory of the occurrence, and sailed away without landing."
"How soon after Captain Cook's occupation of the country did the British Government establish colonies?"
"Not for some time," replied Doctor Bronson. "In the latter part of the last century and the beginning of this many American and English whalers visited New Zealand, and year by year the knowledge of the country was increased. Visitors usually got along well enough with the natives, and were kindly treated; whenever there were encounters with the New Zealanders they were generally caused by the misconduct of the visitors themselves. Thus, in 1809, the captain of the English ship Boyd flogged and otherwise ill-treated a native chief, and the followers of the latter took a terrible revenge by killing no less than seventy of the crew and passengers.
EARLY DAYS IN NEW ZEALAND.
"On some parts of the coast the natives were for a long time hostile, probably in consequence of outrages that had been committed by whalemen and others. Some of their ideas of the white men were curious. The natives paddle their boats with their faces towards the bow, and when they saw the foreign boats coming to the shore they thought the men had eyes in the backs of their heads because they rowed with their backs in the direction of their course. Some of them thought the ships were great birds, and their boats the birdlets or chicks.