EARLY DAYS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 653, 26 July 1921, Page 5

EARLY DAYS.

(Written Specially for the Times.) No.( 1. . FOREWORD. New Zealand is commonly looked pen as extremely youthful, yet it ontajns some of the oldest,' if not he -<jMest, land upon the globe’s urrife.' Whilethe chalk beds which re now England were still being orrned with infinite slowness by the keleton of minute infusorial sinking o the bottom of the North Sea, and ges before the giant masses of the limfiayas were forced up by a conulsive wrinkling of the earth’s must, he Ruahine mountains and the outhern Alps, then united in one mg; chain, were being ground down y glaciers to form the fertile plains f Canterbury and Wellington. Yet f the larger land masses New Zeaind \yas "last of all to be discovered, t all events by civilised man. Najtu’rtherefore, in comparison with them countries, New Zealand . has ery. little history, but what. she has

s net without interest. It has been 'ptly said by some one that one of he first signs of approaching matur:y in a nation is when it begins to nd time to glance "backward along

te oath of progress and collect and

oilate the stories of the incidents in Ls career, which, when weeded of he inconsequential and the trivial, eccme at last its history. We have een too busy up till now to do anyhing but look forward, but there are ot lacking signs that we are begining to realise that we have § pasf| nd there is an increasing appetite readers for information coneming it. The task the present .Titer has undertaken is not by any leans to write a history of the ountry, but to present to readers of he Times a series of sketches oi ; the lost vivid and picturesque episodes i its cai’eer, especially those most rtiiaately concerning the Auckland ’rovinee. t DISCOVERY BY TASMAN, When I use the word discovery I nly mean it to be taken in the sense f making the existence of New Zeaxnd known to western civilisation, 'here is no doubt tha|> It had been iscovered ■ and re-discovered 1 many foies before Tasman saw it. To say othing of the landing of the Maoris, k is extremely probable that Malayns or the inhabitants of the coasts f Hin'lfiustan paid it occasional visits, leaders of Marco Polo’s travels in the last over 700 years ago will know ,-hat intrepid voyagers these people /ere. But no record exists prior to hat of Tasman’s journal. The 13 th f December, 1642, when the Dutch ki.pp.er sighted the Southern Alps, • arks the dawn of history for us. At that time there were three ,aritime nations in Europe, the Engsh, the Spanish and the Dutch.

'heir chief spheres of activity were: for the English, North America; for he Spanish, South America;, and for he Dutch, the East Indies. Java was he centre to the latter’s sphere of pfluence, and it was from that island hat the expedition that discovered Sew Zealand set out. Strangely hough their quest was more in parch of an open waterway than of Lnd. The main idea was to double bund the'great mass of the Auatraan continent and ascertain if a sea to South America existed. It l true that Visscher, Tasman’s pilot,

ad a theoretical belief that a great puthern land existed, which he hoped bntained much gold, and thei’e is no loubt that the chance of finding the redo us metal was one of the incen-L-es that induced the great Dutch fast India Company to send Tasman bring.

[H Leaving Batavia, the chief port of on August 14, two shins, the Zuhaer. and the H.eemakercK, made first for the MauAfter a few weekd_stay there got underway again, this time Hp U nc. for undnowr. waters. Steering BBiuth first tor about ISOO miles he tcurned to the east, and discova large island lying to the south Bf Australia, which he' named after Governor-General of Java, Van but posterity has given the own name to it .A B Saiiifi? east still after leaving TasBfcnni3».lthe expedition sighted about HKid-dav on December 13, 16-12, a high-lying land, bearing S.E. of K 15 miles distant.” In these 18-ords Tasman recorded his log the of New Zealand. The loBBilitv he first saw Is believed to be' the neighbourhood of where IloklBha new stands. The rocky coast its heavy breakers did not apBear to offer a landing place, and the Keisskerew and the Zeehan ran N.,E, Bong it till they turned the north |B- the- island, and following the trerd m the coast turned eastward once ■ore. * On the 17 4 th they saw the first Hgrw f human- habitation in the Bupe ,-f smoke. On the ISth they well into. Golden. Bay, and Bw four canoes full of Maoris near shore. The following clay came HI unfortunate mass sere cMrently made the er.peditian o.eeme

to leave the neighbourhood, without even obtaining the fresh water they were so much in need of. 1 A double canoe approached the vessels, carrying a crew of thirteen Maoris, each with a white hui feather, in his hair. They could' not be induced to come aboard, in spite of the presents displayed totempt them, but appeared to be friendly. Later seven more canoes appeared, and it became apparent that their intentions were hostile. At this time Tasman had gone 01/ board the Heemskerek for the purpose of holding a council, and not liking the looks' of things, sent his boat with seven men back to the the Zeehan to warn those on ooard to be on gugrd. While the boat was returning after delivering the message it was attacked by one of the larger canoes. ' The quartermaster was knocked overboard and four of the crew clubbed to death, two escaping by jumping overboard. The Maoris dragged one of the bodies into their canoe, for what purpose it is unnecessary to state, and made for the shore at high speed. The quartermaster and the two sailors were picked up by a boat from the Heemskerek. Any attempt to land wasi given up, but Tasman spent several days cruising' about between the two islands without discovering the strait which Cook gave his own name to a century and a quarter later. But he had a shrewd idea it was there, for there is a break left in the coast -line of the chart he had prepared. Sailing up the west coast of the North Island they sighted Mount Karioi on the south headland of .Whaingoroa Harbour, where Raglan now stands, but, probably owing-- to the misty weather, they missed Mount Taranaki, cr Egmont, Following the coast they rounded Cape Maria Van Diemen, and discovered the Three Kings, where an attempt was made to jorocure water, but the heavy surf, prevented it, so they sailed away to the ,north without having even set foot on the terra incognita. Tasman believed he had discovered a continent stretching away to South America, Hs called his new find Staten Land, because he deemed it was part of the land off the southern extremity of South’* America known by the same name. When, a little later, it was found that the original Staten was only a small island, the Dutch re-christened this country New Zealand.

So ends the story of the discovery of New Zealand, The sole achievement was the charting, with remarkable accuracy all things considered, of several hundred miles of the western coast. The fears of the Dutch peopled the country with fierce and blood-thirsty" giants, and for 127 years no other navigator visited it. The geographical and commercial information’the Dutch East India Company had taken such pains to endeavour to obtain was not be be added to the world’s stock of knowledge till it was won by one of our own race.