19 APRIL 1845, Page 15

SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

TELVELs, 'Adventure In New Zealand, from 1839 to 1844 of the British Colonization of the Islands.

-Esq. In two volumes

Anne Hathaway; or Shaluspere in Love. By The Blacksmith's Daughter ; an Historical Clayton." In three volumes Form', Leaves from a Journal, and other Fragments ; with some Account of the Beginning By Edward Jerningham Wakefield, Murray.

Emma Severn. In three volumes.

Bentley.

Novel. By the Author of "Walter Newby.

In Verse. By Lord Robertson.

Murray.

WAKEFIELD'S ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND.

EDWARD JERNINGHAM WAKEFIELD is the son of the celebrated writer on Colonization, and nephew of Colonel Wakefield, Agent for the New Zealand Company at Port Nicholson, and of the lamented Captain Wake- field, who fell in the massacre at Wairau. When the Tory sailed in 1839 with the pioneer expedition, Edward Jemingham, then a lad of nineteen, accompanied his uncle Colonel Wakefield, from motives of curiosity. He intended to witness the landing of the first colonists, and return in one of the ships that took them out. The novel and exciting incidents attendant on the settlement of Cook's Strait tempted him to postpone his departure : in a new colony all hands are required to work, and he was insensibly drawn in to participate in the toils of the settlers. His departure was in consequence postponed from time to time. Indeed, latterly, he seems to have been looked upon, and to have looked upon himself, as a permanent member of the colony : but the unaccountable conduct of Governor Fitz- roy, dislocating all relations of society, jerked him too out of his place, and he sailed for England in February 1844. The four years and a half embraced by Adventure in New Zealand were busy and eventful years for that country. During their lapse, the settlements on Cook's Strait were founded, New Zealand was proclaimed a colony of Great Britain, and the Hobson-Shortland Administration began and ended. The author was advantageously placed for acquiring the knowledge requisite to enable him to tell the story of this period. His connexions with the leading settlers, and his active share in their enterprise, enabled him to know all that was going forward; the character of amateur assistant, which he chiefly maintained, left him sufficient leisure to observe and reflect. Not the least interesting passages of the book are those which contain unconscious hints of the formation of his own character. In the opening chapters he is the adventurous boy, sailing so many thousand miles to see the emigrants land, and return : at the close, he has sprung up into the daring but discreet man, whom White settlers consult, and to whom one of the most powerful chiefs in New Zealand proposes an offensive and defensive alliance for the purpose of avenging his uncle's murder. The change has been almost as unnoticed by the reader as by him in whose person it has taken place ; so that it appears neither startling nor unnatural. It is the necessary consequence of a young man's being mixed up in the struggles of an infant society and thrown upon his own resources. The natural and easy pro- cess of development can be distinctly traced on looking back. The cu- rious and eager boy receives from the Natives, for his avidity to learn and speak their language, the sobriquet of Tiraweke (the name of a bird—" the chatterer ' ) ; the amusement soon grows into a personal liking ; the pliability of youth reconciles the stranger to the habits and .modes of thought of the Aborigines ; be becomes an important organ of communication between the White settlers and the Natives; he is adopted into the councils of men older than himself, and grows indifferent to less real pursuits ; he is left in difficult emergencies to rely upon himselfalone, becomes dexterous and confident in his powers of self-support; and when, alone amid the Natives, he learns the catastrophe of Wairau, his conduct is that of one to whom danger is familiar, but who is too well acquainted with the world to rush, under great temptation, upon a line of conduct that might have been pardoned in men of more advanced years.

This is not a digression : to estimate and express the character of the book aright, the character of its author must first be known. Adventure in New Zealand is a literal transcript of the author's thoughts and feel- ings. He possesses the first requisites of a good style, unaffected plain- ness and perfect clearness : but of artistical skill in writing—of the craft of manufacturing literary wares for the market—he shows no knowledge. There is much that is superfluous : passages characterized by delicate per- ception of the beautiful, by graphic power, or real eloquence, are inter- mingled with pages of petty and dry details unskilfully put together. It is the work of one who has been more accustomed to act than to write; of one whose character has been strengthened and braced by circumstan- ces, yet remains the natural character of his time of life—a period at which the perceptive are more developed than the generalizing faculties. When Edward Jerningham Wakefield generalizes, we recognize the mould in which his opinions have naturally been cast—we are reminded of his 'father's writings : when he describes characters, events, and scenery, we are struck with the distinctness of youthful perception, the ardent force of youthful expression, and the involuntary brevity of one too young and unpractised in composition to have acquired the questionable talent of spinning paragraphs. His opinions are in a great measure the opinions of the circle to which he belongs : his accounts of scenes, adventures, incidents, and characters, are fac-similes of what they profess to describe. It times the book reminds one of the writings of Dampier and other old English voyagers—men formed by action, in whom truthfulness of narrative and strong esprit de corps were also strikingly blended. At limes, from the nature of. the subject, it reminds one of Smith's account '6f the settlement of Virginia, or Franklin's details of his early career in Philadelphia. It wins your confidence in-its truth : the author is an im- pmsonation of the views and wishes of the Cook's Strait settlers ; and his ...lively descriptions bring them before us, and the striking scenes and 'alternately grotesque and striking characters amid whom they have planted 'themselves, with the reality of actual vision. Ample space • is allotted to the Natives ; with whom Mr. Wakefield mingled freely and frequently. He is indeed the first who has done substantial justice to the Native character. Previously we have had three classes of writers on the Natives,—first, men of education, whose stay in New Zealand was short, who give us little-more than the gossip they picked up, or the sentiments awakened in themselves by brief interviews with the Aborigines ; second, trading settlers, -who have long associated with the Natives, but who degrade them with vulgar praise when trade has been good, and with vulgar vituperation when it has been un- successful ; third, the Missionaries, who speak of the Natives in friendly but patronizing terms, the highest enlogium being that they are actually capable of being taught to emulate at humble distance the acquirements of the psalm-singing mechanics who have undertaken to instruct them. Mr. Wakefield combines the capabilities of the first class with the oppor- tunities of the other two. Never was there a grosser mistake than that committed by Governor Fitzroy when he taxed Edward Jemingliam Wakefield with hostility to the Natives. Mr. Wakefield lived too in- timately with them, and suffered too great a loss at their hands, not to be made painfully aware of their weaknesses and vices ; but the enthusiastic warmth with which he dwells upon the nobler characters among them, the frank tribute he pays to the commanding talents even of Rauperaha, and above all, the affection for his person with which he inspired so many of them, entitle him to be considered as a sincere and hearty friend to the New Zealanders. Without any attempt to theorize—by simply stating in the course of his narrative the mutual relations of the Natives in their own circles, and their habitual employments, he enables us to form a fair estimate of the grade of civilization to which they have actually attained. It is in their canoes—whether at sea or stemming the rapids of a river— that the New Zealanders appear to most advantage. In managing their boats alone do they appear to have carried to any great length the power of combined action and submission to discipline ; and the exertions re- quired in that exercise give full play to their animated energies, and are ma- debased by the revolting coarseness of nature which their warlike displays elicit. But a personal sketch of a powerful inland chief, who, intrenched within the mountain recesses of Taupo, feels himself "every inch a king," possesses a more elevated interest. "The day before starting, I went to take my formal leave of old Heuhen, pur- suant to his request. After the usual greetings had passed, he told me at once, that he suspected our two parties had met, one from Poniki [Port Nicholson] and the other from Waitemata, to consult over his land, with a view to buy it, or even seize it forcibly at a later season. 'If this be your wish,' said he, go back and tell my words to the people who sent you. I am king here, as my fathers were before me, and as King George and his fathers have been over your country. I have not sold my chieftainship to the Governor, as all the chiefs round the sea- coast have done; nor have I sold my land. I will sell neither. A messenger was here from the Governor to buy the land the other day, and I refused: if you are on the same errand, I refuse you too. You White people are numerous and strong; you can easily crush us if you choose, and take possession of that which we will not yield: but here is my right arm, and should thousands of you corns, you must make me a slave or kill me before I will give up my authority or my land. When you go, you will say I am big-mouthed, like all the other -Maori who have talked to you: but I am now telling you that by which I mean to abide. Let your people keep the sea-coast, and leave the interior tons, and our mountain, whose name is sacred to the bones of my fathers.' * * * The old man said all this calmly, and without working himself into a state of excitement; but, while he disclaimed any intention of swaggering, and, in holding up his right arm from beneath his mat, displayed his herculean proportions unimpaired by the sixty years that have whitened his hair, I could not help admiring-his calm and manly. declaration, and believing it to be as he said, true. •a a I asked his per- mission to ascend Tonga Rim on my way bock; knowing that he had been very angry with Mr. Bidwill for doing so during his absence. But he steadily refused; saying, 'I would do anything else to show you my love and friendship; but you must not ascend my tipuna (ancestor.)' * * This was a curious illustra- tion of the enforcement of the custom of tapu, as used to support the dignity of the chief. Heuheu constantly identified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor. This legend of an'hereclitary descent from an oiet majestic in itself and naturally productive of awe, had doubtless been banded from father to son in the chief's family; and was wisely calculated to maintain the aristocratic position of the leader, by appealing to the weak and superstitious imaginations of the crowd."

The scenery around Cook's Strait is from its beauty and grandeur singularly favourable to the strengthening of such imaginative supersti- tions; and Mr. Wakefield's faculty of receiving deep and distinct im- pressions of visible objects, and expressing them vividly, has enabled him to do justice to its charms. His descriptions convey distinct notions of the characteristic differences in the equally beautiful scenery of Port Nicholson, Queen Charlotte's Sound, the Pelorus, Nelson, Wan- ganui, and even of the varying phases of these scenes under the shifting effects of elemental influences. As a specimen of his descriptive powers, we subjoin his account of "the Place of Cliffs."

"The cliffs increase in height as you advance into the reach, so that the forest- trees on their edge seem like feathers; the song of the birds among them is only faintly heard, and the streams which rush over the steep are frittered into the thin- nest spray long before they reach the water. Facing you, the cliff is surmounted by a steep hill of the additional height of some 500 or 600 feet, which seems to tower proudly over the trench in which the river flows; and on its top, the Natives told me afterwards, are cultivations, springs of water, and woods of large timber, and ample room to support many hundreds of people when compelled to take re- fuge there. Though the river has a considerable descent here, and the polers have to work hard throughout the distance in ascending, the gradual increase in the height of the cliffs combines with the way in which the strata strike the water-line to produce a remarkable optical deception. It seems as though you were rapidly descending; and I have more than once noticed, that in returning towards the sea at the rate of ten miles an hour, you appear to be going up lull at this particular spot. Add to this, that out of a dark cavern in either chic near the water's edge, a large stream comes mitring, and echoing, and foaming into the river; that an augmenting darkness is produced as you advance, by the height of the cliffs and the comparative narrowness in which the river flows; and that some old legend or superstition makes the Natives speak in whispers and compose their features to seriousness ;.and the sublimity of the whole scene may he imagined. Such was the intense excitement produced on me by this burst of Nature s majesty,,when Ifirst went through the pass, that I relieved myself in- voluntarily by a deep sigh and a rushing of tears to my eyes, when we had passed on into the comparatively- tame and reposing scenery which immediately fame 'The remaik'haibeen made before, that the scenery-of New &alga

presents many analogies to that of Greece, and the New Zealanders of our day to the Greeks of the Iliad. The analogy extends to the legends in which the New Zealanders attribute life and human emotions to their .streams and mountains. The Manawatn becomes in these traditions the -silvery coils of some snake-formed spirit; Mount Egmont, at first placed in neighbourly amity beside Tonga Riro, animated by jealousy up- roots himself from his site, leaving dark chasms and splintered crags be- hind to mark where he had once been, and breaks through a chain of lower hills, to take up a new position on the sea-shore. In the imagi- nations of New Zealand bards, the inert earth and its pillared foundations become sentient beings instinct with motion ; and their mountain-ridges shift and crawl like Giithe's Brokken in the 1Valpurgis-nacht.

The contrast between the virtues and vices of savages is that be- tween beauty and repulsive deformity : the contrast between the vices and redeeming traits of beach-combers and other outcasts of civilization is more frequently that between beauty and grotesque- ness. The peculiarities of this rough race are seized with great gusto and fidelity by Mr. Wakefield. Their piloting and whale-fishing exploits are powerfully described ; their domestic menages, portrayed with an unsparing but not unfriendly accuracy. No attempt is made to palliate or conceal the vices the Natives have contracted from them ; yet full justice is done to their services as pioneers of a kind of civiliza- tion. The more prominent individuals are brought before us with all their personal peculiarities. Dicky Barrett, "perfectly round all over," with his jovial ruddy face, twinkling eyes, and good-humoured smile— in his white jacket, blue dungaree trousers, and round straw hat—con- trasts with the sinister Thorns, his small stature and repulsive feature, his deformity, the consequence of an accident while grappling with a whale, and his inhospitable character. There is much justice in the remarks with which Mr. Wakefield winds up his account of the whalers. "It is frightful to calculate what might have been the consequences had those rough colonizers been allowed to go many years more unheeded. That the Na- tives would have been speedily exterminated, is hardly to be doubted—whether by vice and disease, or by actual collision with these growing communities. Their had effects might have been felt by all the maritime world. In a country so adapted for building and outfitting of ships, and where living was so easy- and comfortable, the tortuous bays of the Pelorus and Queen Charlotte's Sound might have swarmed with a powerful nation of buccaneers, possessing every re- quisite for the spoliation of our commerce with Australia and the South Sea Islands, On one occasion when some rumour of a war between the United States and Great Britain Ink reached New Zealand, I know of extensive designs among the whalers for seizing as prizes, with their boats alone, every American whaler or other ship that might approach the Strait."

The official gentlemen of New Zealand present a less tangible mark than such substantial realities as the Native chiefs and the leading beach- whalers. Yet even their inane peculiarities are happily seized and por- trayed. A strange set they do appear to have been. Passing over the deeper guilt of the Police Magistrate, who employed his gaol tolock up an inconvenient husband, and was drubbed by his own constable fol., excess of gallantry, and ultimately obliged to evaporate under a chitrge of cheating at cards, we find in the frivolity of the more innocent employes striking illustrations of the no-government of New Zealand under British rule. From the lowest to the highest, they are worthy of each other. Brave "Captain" Cole, the constable, who achieved the gallant feat of hauling down the New Zealand flag at Port Nicholson—stealing up to the flag-staff while most of the settlers were still asleep, and cast- ing disdainful yet cautious glances around him—is a grotesque enough figure; so is Mr. Felton Mathew asking Sir George Gipps's leave to wear two epaulettes and obtaining permission to wear three ; but neither of them come up to the Colonial Secretary demanding an explanation from a foul-mouthed bullock-driver.

"Sam Phelps, a drunken, foul-mouthed bullock-driver, from one of the neigh- bouring colonies, was [by fines for intoxication] a frequent contributor to the reve- nue. • * Sam appeared not to care so much for the fine—he had got used to that, and paid it with great regularity; but the manner of inflicting it seemed to offend him, and he took his own means of revenging himself. His team of bul- locks was soon christened ' Shortland," 'Smart,' 'Best,' and ' Cole '; and he used to apply the coarsest epithets to them as he flogged them along. One day the Colonial Secretary, stately and pompous as usual, happened to pass the dray. Brutal threats to 'cut Shortknd's tail off if he did not move on,' to break his heart,' to cut his liver in two,' or to 'whip his akin off' startled him in his promenade; and on turning round he saw old Sam ' whacking ' his team. To the surprise of the spectators, the Chief Magistrate asked the bullock-driver whether he applied those expressions to him.' Sam answered, with an innocent grin, 'I wasn't a spiakin' to you; • I'm a drivin' my bullocks; that's my business': and the Colonial Secretary retreated from the scene, amidst a repetition of the most frightful imprecations, threats, and mockery of the bullock-driver."

The Missionaries we find in these pages chiefly mirrored in their effects upon the Native mind. That Mr. Wakefield entertains no hostility or prejudice against the teachers of religion, appears from the cordial tribute lie pays to Mr. Bumby, the Wesleyan, and to Mr. Hadfield, the Church Missionary. But he presents a fearless and dark picture of the mis- chievous effects that have been produced by narrow-minded and illiterate sectaries unable to do more than drill their disciples to a strict observance sf external ceremonials, or a parrot-like repetition of formulae of belief which their limited range of ideas renders them unable to comprehend. He relates a number of striking incidents which leave the painful im- pression that the injudicious teaching of many missionaries has tended to lower, not to elevate, the standard of New Zealand morality. The bad effects of the haughty and reserved deportment which the Missionaries .assume towards the Natives, as tending to their self-abasement, are pointed out with force and discrimination. This theme has been touched on by others : but a new phasis of Missionary influence is disclosed by Mr. Wakefield, in his sketch of a high-minded intelligent chief, who adopts not only the petty formalities which his teachers prac- tise, but the stern asceticism which they preach. E Kai, the Maori "Balfour of Burleigh," is a rigid disciplinarian, noways averse to assert his opinions by arms. A party of Heathen Natives, -encamped below his pa, were, as usual, singing songs in the evening. Prom the fence above he sternly commanded them to cease. They

replied, that they were on the banks of the river, the common high- way, and had a right to please themselves. In the controversy which

ensued, the Heathens kept their temper, but the -converted chief lost his, and put an end to the debate by an insulting taunt, equivalent to "Who lost their head chief; and had to fetch his bones home from the field of defeat?" The quarrel will in all likelihood "draw blood another day."

The last class of inhabitants, of whom a great deal of new information will be found in this work, is composed of the settlers. They are pre- sented in a natural and lively manner, in their busy industry and in their hours of relaxation—at their races, their clubs, their balls and partiei,' their public meetings and elections. It is curious enough to find all the little feuds of exclusive circles and disappointed aspirants to admission, with which we are familiar at home, reproduced at the Antipodes. The interest which the colonists take in the rise and progress of enclosures, gardens, and wheat-fields, catches the reader by a kind of moral contagion. The obstacles which impede the raw settler, and the shifts;

by which they are encountered and overcome, have the interest of a romance. A warm sympathy is enlisted in behalf of the high-spirited

adventurers when thwarted by shams in office. This, too, may be and ought to be said on behalf of the great body of the settlers in Cook'i Strait : they left England possessed by a sentiment—perhaps an exagge- rated one—in favour of the Aborigines of New Zealand ; they flattered themselves that they were destined to be the instruments of raising a rude but generous race to an equality with themselves : in this spirit they have continued to act; and though the day-dream of docile and amiable children of nature has vanished, the high principle of acting with justice and forbearance to the Natives has been resolutely adhered to. The settlers have been maligned, obstructed, and exposed to vexatious aggrea- sions ; yet there is not a single instance of collision in which they have been aggressors, or in which they have sought redress for injuries other- wise than under the guidance of the constituted authorities and in cone formity with the precepts of law. No such atrocities as stain the annals of New South Wales can be laid to the charge of the settlers on Cook's Strait. Their forbearance is unprecedented in the intercourse between civilized and savage races.

The value and charm of Mr. Wakefield's Adventure consist in the multifarious and graphic traits of character it contains. As the most complete and continuous history of British colonization in New Zealand that has yet appeared, it is important; but much more so from the real and lifelike details which place us in the midst of New Zealand society. The author's diary of the colony, proceeding by repeated touches, step by step, renders us sensible of the most minute characteristic traits, the most gradual changes in temper and relations. The rise and progress of friendship between the settlers in Cook's Strait and the Natives are seen;

so are its interruption and decline. We see the seeds of distrust and enmity between them sown and matured by the insidious promptings of

Missionaries, Protectors, and other officials. The matters of controversy between the Government and the Company are also clearly set forth; with an avowed feeling for the author's own side of the question, yet

always conscientiously, and, we really believe, with great accuracy. Per- haps we could not, in concluding, give a better idea of the work than by stet-mg, that notwithstanding our surfeit of New Zealand books mid papers while compiling the Supplement published at the beginning of the year, we have perused it with a sense of freshness and perfect novelty.