AN OLD NEW ZEALANDER.*
TILE author of this curious book seems to have begun his career as a midshipman in her Majesty's Navy,—or, to speak more strictly, in that of his Majesty, the late lamented King William IV. Here and there in the course of his travels he mentions his meetings with friends whom he had last seen some twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, when he was stationed in this or that remote part of the world. He appears as a man of energetic, simple, and methodical character, thoroughly British in his ideas and prejudices, yet anxious not to form narrow judgments of men and things, and sturdy to vindicate everywhere the English love of truth and justice. After a long life-time of active effort, amidst the difficulties and perils of a new and un- developed country, in the history of which his name occupies an honourable position, he returns at length, by way of America, to the land of his birth ; and thence gives forth this compendium of his adventures, observations, and reflections. Mr. Crawford was a geologist and botanist, and something of an engineer ; and in all his journeys about New Zealand he kept a note-book, in which are oddly mixed up particulars of " drifts," "seams," and "beds," records of plants with un- familiar names, brief disquisitions upon roads and sites, together with detached glimpses of native character and scenery, and bits of personal adventure, sometimes of the most trifling de- scription. To take an example at random :— " On January 16th [1862] we started at 8.30 a.m., after a good bathe and an eel breakfast. At nine o'clock we stopped at Kaitarepa, on the left bank, to get a pannikin ; we had left without one, and had found the inconvenience of having nothing but the lid of a tin to drink out of. We passed Te Maraku—' aki and Te Itangiau on the right bank, and reached Tapue on the left. Here an aboriginal brought a side of pork as a present to our crew. At 11.0 a.m., I saw the Otaire range, bearing N.N.W. It is covered with forest, and has every appearance of being only a higher part of the tertiaries. We passed a deserted pa on the right bank, called Waimann. Hero we shot a cormorant. On the left bank opposite is Putatera, perched on the top of a cliff. We stopped to dine at Otaire, and found here pecten, waldheimia, spirit-en &c."
It is not easy to see what advantage the reader is expected to derive from jottings like the above. Mr. Crawford does, indeed, in his preface remark that he was desirous to bring before the minds of those who know New Zealand only as she is in these days of her
• Recollections of 7'rarels La New Zealand anti Australia. By J. C. Crawford. London: Trttbner and Co. prosperity, a picture of New Zealand as she was in the time of her wildness and savagery. Now, this is a perfectly fair motive for the introduction of matter otherwise unimportant; but then, in order to give such matter its value, it should be accompanied by some information enabling the average reader to estimate the degree of progress or alteration that has since been made. If, for instance, Mr. Crawford had followed up the fragment of diary just quoted by telling us that there was now a service of steam-launches up and down the river, that the scene of the pre- sentation of the side of pork was now covered by a fashionable hotel, and that no cormorants had been seen in that part of the country for five years, we should feel that we were receiving intelligible instruction. No doubt, the Pakehas would be able to supply this omission for themselves ; but the majority of Mr. Crawford's English readers will have had no opportunity of being Pakehas. It is but very seldom, however, that he con- descends to remember this fact. Occasionally he remarks of some person whom he meets that he was killed in this or that massacre that occurred years afterwards; and once in a while we have a foot-note containing some explanatory allusion or comment. We should have been glad to have had more. And Mr. Crawford can be graphic, when he chooses. His description of George Toms, generally called, "for what reason I know not," "Geordie Bolts," is excellent:—" Toms was a noted disciplinarian. If any one ventured to dispute with him, he would tie him up and hold him prisoner. He was a short, stout man, with a trunk like a barrel and a bullet head, standing firm on his legs, and looking every one straight in the face." And in another place we are introduced to "worthy Captain Kyle,—a Scotch Presbyterian of no rigid type, but who had been so well trained in his youth that he generally sang psalms instead of songs, as he paced the deck on duty. His pipe was rarely out of his month, and in the darkness of the middle watch one would ever and anon hear his stentorian voice calling out, Boy, light my pipe r " There is a personal tone throughout the volume, by which we do not mean an egotistic tone ; but Mr. Crawford tells us only what he has personally seen and thought, and avoids all information coming at second hand.
Any book about old New Zealand must, of course, ran the risk of comparison with the immortal production- of the old " Pakeha Maori," a new edition of which was published in England two or three years ago. The comparison cannot, in this case, be for a moment sustained. Mr. Crawford has but a fractional share of either the sympathy or the humour that overflowed in the other writer. He never enters into the Maori mind and reads what is passing there. His point of view is dry, external, and, so to say, geological. He does not see the reason of it all, and therefore, he does not appreciate the fun of it. Yet his eyes are sharp eyes enough on their own plane, and here and there he is betrayed into a dry smile. Curiously suggestive of the supernatural theories of the Maoris is the little anec,dote (told in the briefest and barest way, without any comment or introduction) about one Watakini, who, "alter dinner," "requested the loan of a tomahawk, to defend himself on going up to the pa on the hill above. He said he knew there was a taipo (devil) about ; he felt it in his head." The italics are our own. The sentence indicates a conception of the subjec- tivity of spirits, evil or otherwise, which could hardly have failed to captivate the imagination of any philosopher less matter-of-fact than Mr. Crawford. A little further on we hear of a prophet who had discovered that "lizards were the root of all evil," and that if they were destroyed in proper fashion, the Maori would be able to defeat the Pakeha. The prophet indi- cated a grove of karaka trees as one of the hiding-places of these demoniac lizards, and ordered the grove to be cut down, and the lizards to be roasted, pounded, and eaten in a pre-
scribed form. And all that Mr. Crawford has to remark upon this is that "these Maori prophets are great nuisances; they are generally the precursors of wars and tumults." He seems to take more interest in a canoe-race upon the Whanganni river, in which the crew opposed to his own was made up as
follows :—" In the bow was a girl, next a young man, then a
stout middle-aged man, then a fat, good-looking young woman, an elderly woman, a girl, a man with a red shirt, a child, a dwarf, a good-looking girl, an old woman, a boy, two children, a young woman, and a highly tatooed old gentleman steering." This certainly was a crew which would have created a sensation at Putney. Mr. Crawford omits to say whether it ciune in first in the race. Of the Maories as a whole, he seldom ex- presses any definite opinion, though in one place he affirms them to be a "matter-of-fact people," because his companion, Mr. Deighton, had drawn a sketch of a village, and had intro- duced in the foreground the figure of a horse, with ahoy feeding it, and the Maori critics wished to know which was the horse and which was the boy ! But may not the artist have been in some measure answerable for this P Amore convincing instance is that of the old savage who, when put on trial by his comrades for having furnished supplies to the British troops during the time of war, defended himself on the ground that the Bible commands us to feed our enemies. This plea, Mr. Crawford assures us, was held by the court to be amply exculpatory, and the prisoner was acquitted forthwith.
The chapters containing an account of the author's travels from 1839 to 1877 take up about three-fourths of the volume; they are followed by a chapter on New Zealand politics, which is marked by considerable perspicuity and good-sense; another on the Maori language, or rather on the best way of indicating the pronunciation by the orthography; a chapter on the origin, character, and religion of the Maori race, which does not deter- mine much, but suggests a good many interesting questions ; and other chapters on the geological, physical, and agricultural features of New Zealand. After this, on March 28th,1879, Mr. Crawford embarks with his family on board the steamship "Rotorua," and sets sail for California, on his way home to Eng- land. The account of this final journey is graphic and enter- taining; and the writer's impressions of America are especially worth reading. Altogether, the book leaves a pleasant impres- sion, and if Mr. Crawford had not been too desirous to make his work complete, he would probably have succeeded in making it more amusing, ana not less valuable. Three good maps of New Zealand are comprised in the volume, and there are plenty of tolerably presentable illustrations.
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