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McDonnell was a naval lieutenant; had served under the East India Company; had smuggled opium to China; had explored the coasts of New Zealand; and on March 31st, 1831, had arrived at Hokianga from Sydney in the 'Sir George Murray', a vessel which he had purchased for 1,300 pounds. He brought with him his wife, two children, and a servant, but took them back on the return voyage.

He wrote up the log in their presence, stating that Captain Blogg had been washed into the sea in a sudden squall on a dark night; vessel hove to, boat lowered, searched for captain all night, could see nothing of him; mate took charge, and bore away for Hokianga next morning. When these untruthful particulars had been entered and read over to the four seamen, they were satisfied for the present.

These differences in the south-west of the island hardly disturbed the comity which prevailed in the north. A more serious trouble, however, arose in this region when a Roman Catholic mission appeared there in 1838. In that year a French bishop and a band of priests landed at Hokianga, and afterwards moved to Kororareka, right in the centre of the Bay of Islands.

The immense piles of sawn timber lying here give to us new-chums some notion of the vast timber-trade of Northern New Zealand, especially since we learn that much which goes to the South Island and elsewhere is shipped direct from Whangaroa, Hokianga, the Kaipara, and other ports in the north.

A Shakespeare and a Lemprière were once found in the possession of a chief in the wildest part of the interior. They had belonged to his Pakeha long since dead. Elsewhere a tattered prayer-book was shown as the only relic of another. One of the kind, Maning by name, who lived with a tribe on the beautiful inlet of Hokianga, will always be known as the Pakeha Maori.

The most probable conclusion was that the tribes situated around the European dockyard at Hokianga, having meditated for some time past a great war-like expedition, waited the return of this schooner from Sydney to possess themselves of an additional supply of arms and ammunition, which might enable them to take the field with a certainty of conquest.

So far from being "stripped," the missionaries actually rose in the estimation of the Maoris. A quarrel arose out of Hongi's death, which led to hostilities between the men of the Bay of Islands and those of Hokianga. The army of the Bay was worsted, and both sides were not unwilling for peace if honour could be preserved.

This company's agent, Captain Herd, went so far as to buy land on the Hokianga Estuary, and conduct thither a party of settlers. One of the first experiences of the new-comers was, however, the sight of a native war-dance, the terrifying effects of which, added to more practical difficulties, caused most of them to fold their tents and depart to Australia.

Unlike their brethren in Africa and some other parts of the world, the New Zealand missionaries did not attempt much in the way of exploration. Marsden discovered the Manukau Harbour in 1820; Kendall and King were the first white men to visit Hokianga; Henry Williams' little Herald was the first European vessel since Captain Cook's Endeavour to enter the Bay of Plenty.

Neither Hadfield, Maunsell, nor the printer Colenso were amongst the land-buyers, and the same honourable self-denial was shown by all the Catholic missionaries, and by all the Wesleyans but two. Nor were the lay land-claimants always ravenous. Maning, the Pakeha Maori, had paid £222 for his 200 acres at Hokianga. At Tauranga £50 had been given for a building site fifty feet square, in a pa.