The Book of the Bush | Page 3

with the luxuries lavished on the colonial seaman. He had fresh beef, fresh bread, good biscuit, tea, coffee, and vegetables, and three pounds a month wages. There was a vacancy on the schooner for an able seaman, and Jack filled it. He then registered a solemn oath that he would "never go back to England no more," and kept it.
Some kind of Government was necessary, and, as the first inhabitants were criminals, the colony was ruled like a gaol, the Governor being head gaoler. His officers were mostly men who had been trained in the army and navy. They were all poor and needy, for no gentleman of wealth and position would ever have taken office in such a community. They came to make a living, and when free immigrants arrived and trade began to flourish, it was found that the one really valuable commodity was rum, and by rum the officers grew rich. In course of time the country was divided into districts, about thirty or thirty-five in number, over each of which an officer presided as police magistrate, with a clerk and staff of constables, one of whom was official flogger, always a convict promoted to the billet for merit and good behaviour.
New Holland soon became an organised pandemonium, such as the world had never known since Sodom and Gomorrah disappeared in the Dead Sea, and the details of its history cannot be written. To mitigate its horrors the worst of the criminals were transported to Norfolk Island. The Governor there had not the power to inflict capital punishment, and the convicts began to murder one another in order to obtain a brief change of misery, and the pleasure of a sea voyage before they could be tried and hanged in Sydney. A branch pandemonium was also established in Van Diemen's Land. This system was upheld by England for about fifty years.
The 'Britannia', a convict ship, the property of Messrs. Enderby & Sons, arrived at Sydney on October 14th, 1791, and reported that vast numbers of sperm whales were seen after doubling the south-west cape of Van Diemen's Land. Whaling vessels were fitted out in Sydney, and it was found that money could be made by oil and whalebone as well as by rum. Sealing was also pursued in small vessels, which were often lost, and sealers lie buried in all the islands of the southern seas, many of them having a story to tell, but no story-teller.
Whalers, runaway seamen, shilling-a-month men, and escaped convicts were the earliest settlers in New Zealand, and were the first to make peaceful intercourse with the Maoris possible. They built themselves houses with wooden frames, covered with reeds and rushes, learned to converse in the native language, and became family men. They were most of them English and Americans, with a few Frenchmen. They loved freedom, and preferred Maori customs, and the risk of being eaten, to the odious supervision of the English Government. The individual white man in those days was always welcome, especially if he brought with him guns, ammunition, tomahawks, and hoes. It was by these articles that he first won the respect and admiration of the native. If the visitor was a "pakeha tutua," a poor European, he might receive hospitality for a time, in the hope that some profit might be made out of him. But the Maori was a poor man also, with a great appetite, and when it became evident that the guest was no better than a pauper, and could not otherwise pay for his board, the Maori sat on the ground, meditating and watching, until his teeth watered, and at last he attached the body and baked it.
In 1814 the Church Missionary Society sent labourers to the distant vineyard to introduce Christianity, and to instruct the natives in the rights of property. The first native protector of Christianity and letters was Hongi Hika, a great warrior of the Ngapuhi nation, in the North Island. He was born in 1777, and voyaging to Sydney in 1814, he became the guest of the Rev. Mr. Marsden. In 1819 the rev. gentleman bought his settlement at Kerikeri from Hongi Hika, the price being forty-eight axes. The area of the settlement was thirteen thousand acres. The land was excellent, well watered, in a fine situation, and near a good harbour. Hongi next went to England with the Rev. Mr. Kendall to see King George, who was at that time in matrimonial trouble. Hongi was surprised to hear that the King had to ask permission of anyone to dispose of his wife Caroline. He said he had five wives at home, and he could clear off the whole of them if he liked without troubling anybody. He received valuable presents in London, which he brought back to Sydney,