CHAPTER IX

NEW ZEALAND IN THE SECOND EPOCH

When we pass from Australia to New Zealand we breathe The colo- a different atmosphere. In colonizing New Zealand, scattered "^'dij^ colonizers went before, organized colonizers followed after, fired from and then came the flag. Again, the scattered colonizers ^^jf^ went to New Zealand for many reasons, some for trade, some for religion, some because it was the Alsatia of the Antipodes, but all because the Maori invited them with passionate enthusiasm. In the colonization of Australia the blacks played a passive part, and as the whites advanced melted away or were trampled into mud like snow in Spring. In the colonization of New Zealand native welcome stimulated and native pressure resisted the Englishman's advance at every point. But for these crucial differences, the same historical tendencies were apparent in both cases ; and the history of the birth of Tasmania and of the birth of South Australia repeated itself in New Zealand.

In 1793 King, when governing Norfolk Island, kidnapped Kingbegan two high-born Maori from near the Bay of Islands in the far ™ n ^i* north of Northern Island, New Zealand, set them to teach his convicts how to prepare New Zealand flax, 1 at which, being woman's work, they were about as expert as Achilles at the distaff — treated them like gentlemen and restored them in 1794. Hence arose friendship, and visits by Maori to Sydney, Tahiti, and London. The friendship was only Platonic; and King's advocacy of a settlement on the

1 Phormium ienax.