EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2145, 30 July 1907, Page 2

EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

Writing editorially of tho Hon. RMcNab’s book, the Lyttelton limes says:—Muriliiku is the “tail or Now Zealand, and this volume covers the history of the south-west coast of New Zealand, Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island, and the various southern islands, from 1770 to 1829. A more | fascinating story of discovery and adventure it would be difficult to imagine. An author more intent on the production of merely picturesque history would have divided the halrcentruy and pleased the public with two or three romantic volumes. Air. AlcNab has preferred the more direct historical method, leaving tho facts themselves to interest the reader. The volume, as it stands, is quite the best historical work New Zealand has pie duced. Air. AlcNab went to Hobart and to Sydney for official records and earlv newspaper files, searching patiently through shipping news and even advertisements for scraps of information relating to the New Zealand trade. Every hint was followed as far as the records would permit. Tho search was continued in tho Atlantic ports of the United States, where sealing and whaling vessels had their headquarters, and there the original logs of th© ships were examined. It was in the Essex collection of manuscripts at Salem that Air. AlcNab discovered the rich treasure of Robert Alurray’s logs of the Britannia, which deposited the first sealing party on the New Zealand coast in 1792, of the Endeavor, abandoned in Dusky Sound in 1795, and of the Providence, built in Dusky Sound in the same year. This find, ill itself, would have justified the volume Air AlcNab continued his work in London, and ultimately obtained access to accounts of the voyages of Bellinghauseu, the great Russian navigator who visited Alaequarie Isiand in 1820, and of Alalaspina, Ills distinguished Spaniard who visited Doubtful Sound in 1793. There were no published English translations of these important foreign works, but Air. AlcNab gives in full the passages of special interest to New Zealanders.

~ The story opens with Captain Cook s rough mapping of the southern coast in 1770; and a full account is given of his stay in Dusky Sound three years later. It was the great navigator’s survey of this Sound that caused it to become in after years the most frequented harbor of the southern coast. It lay not far from the. track of sailing vessels using the .southern ocean, and mariners took a chantage of the knowledge that they could find there a good anchorage and plenty of timber. It was Cook’s surVO7 that brought Vancouver to Dusky in H9l when lie was on his way to the Sandwich Islands. There are few more interesting chapters in the volume than the story of Vancouver’s stay in New Zealand waters. Between 1773 and 1791 Mr. McNab finds nothing of importance to record, out with tli© last docado of tiro either nth century Muriliiku becomes almost a busy centre of trade. The report that seals and sea. elephants abounded on the-coast naturally attracted traders, and for tho next 30 or 40 years the history of the south is the history mainly of sealing ships whalers, and flax traders. Ma'lasy.“ la ’ tl | e c , Spa “ i . sll explorer, visited .Doubtful Sound in 1793 in tho course ot an extended voyage round tho world, but that was almost tho only episode of importance outside the *} ,her ° commerce. It was in 1792 ; -il! - V. llllanl Haven proposed to take the Britannia across from Sydney to Dusky “to procure seals’ skins for tli e China market,” and before the clo»e of the year, although his plans had been greatly modified, lie lauded a sealing gang in the Sound, whore the men remained for te u months before being relieved. They were there, in fact, when Malaspina, after visiting Doubtful Sound, made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the harbor which Cook had described so fully. With Raven in the Britannia, as fourth mate, was Mr. Robert Murray, who subsequently joined the Endeavor as third mate, and whose carefully compiled records have given Mr. McNab so much interesting material. This Endeavor was an 800-ton vessel, which arrived at Sydney from India in May, 1795. She was refitted aa-.l sent across to Dusky, with the brig Fancy, on a sealing expedition, "ii ad was there abandoned as unseawiithy. Mr. McNab makes it quite clear that this old wreck, concerning which so much has been written, was not identical with the famauSs “cut buil; bark” in which Caiitain Cook hid come to this colony a quarter of a century earlier. The whole story of this voyage is fll of material for the romantic writer. Mr. McNab gives it in matter-of-fact style, quoting logs and official reports without any attempt to dress them in silks and laces, but no reader with a spark of sentiment in his composition can fad to be moved by the absorbing intciest of it all. The story of the discovery of the lonely islands of the south, Auckland, Campbell, Bounty, Antipodes, and Macquarie, and of the extraordinary competition of the traders for their seal-skins and elephant oil, is related in tho same direct midecorated style, but it is imposible to escape from the fascination of the theme. Head-hunting, flaxcutting, sealing, fighting with 'the Maoris, or starying oil almost barren islands, the hardy seamen from Sydney or the New England ports were making history in their peculiarly Virile and unconscious fashion. Mr. McNab has rendered the colony an inestimable service in rescuing that history from oblivion. His promise to extend the story when he has the leisure will almost tempt the reader into political opposition, but for our Oivn part we think tho public should grateful that the industry, the ability and, above all. the patriotism that inspired and carried out this investigation .should now he at their command in the sphere of practical politic