axes, knives, and other edge-tools,
beads, and ornaments, but in 1832 the Maoris would scarcely take
anything but arms and ammunition, red woollen shirts, and tobacco.
Every man in a native hapu had to procure a musket, or die. If the
warriors of the hapu had no guns they would soon be all killed by
some tribe that had them. The price of one gun, together with the
requisite powder, was one ton of cleaned flax, prepared by the women
and slaves in the sickly swamps. In the meantime the food crops were
neglected, hunger and hard labour killed many, some fell victims to
diseases introduced by the white men, and the children nearly all
died.

And the Maoris are still dying out of the land, blighted by our
civilization. They were willing to learn and to be taught, and they
began to work with the white men. In 1853 I saw nearly one hundred
of them, naked to the waist, sinking shafts for gold on Bendigo, and
no Cousin Jacks worked harder. We could not, of course, make them
Englishmen--the true Briton is born, not made; but could we not
have kept them alive if we had used reasonable means to do so? Or is
it true that in our inmost souls we wanted them to die, that we might
possess their land in peace?

Besides flax, it was found that New Zealand produced most excellent
timber--the kauri pine. The first visitors saw sea-going canoes
beautifully carved by rude tools of stone, which had been hollowed
out, each from a single tree, and so large that they were manned by
one hundred warriors. The gum trees of New Holland are extremely
hard, and their wood is so heavy that it sinks in water like
iron. But the kauri, with a leaf like that of the gum tree, is the
toughest of pines, though soft and easily worked--suitable for
shipbuilding, and for masts and spars. In 1830 twenty-eight vessels
made fifty-six voyages from Sydney to New Zealand, chiefly for flax;
but they also left parties of men to prosecute the whale and seal
fisheries, and to cut kauri pine logs. Two vessels were built by
English mechanics, one of 140 tons, and the other of 370 tons burden,
and the natives began to assist the new-comers in all their labours.

At this time most of the villages had at least one European resident
called a Pakeha Maori, under the protection of a chief of rank and
influence, and married to a relative of his, either legally or by
native custom. It was through the resident that all the trading of
the tribe was carried on. He bou