hand, and more hypocrisy on the other. The ministers are said to have interfered even with the innocent usages of society, to have usurped many of the functions of government, and to have taken advantage of their position to obtain an undue share of trade. They no longer supplied ships with provisions gratuitously, or for so good a purpose as we have mentioned, but made eager use of their means and knowledge to rival their flock in the market. These allegations may be overcharged; but upon the whole the system did not work so well as might have been anticipated from the mild and cheerful spirit of Christianity.

The elements of disorder, however, were set in motion by political occurrences. The French, or rather their officers in the Pacific, were jealous of the power of Protestantism, and at length contrived to force the helpless Queen to accept of the protection of their flag. Their next step was to take possession of Tahiti for the crown of France; upon which the British consul hauled down his flag, and the whole affair was in due time disavowed by the cabinet of the Tuilleries, and the overhasty admiral recalled. But the indiscretion of the French officials did not end here. In 1844, they visited upon a British subject, formerly a missionary, but then performing the functions of consul, the offences of the people in resisting the absurd and odious tyranny of the protectorate; and had it not been for the good sense and moderation of the two European cabinets, the whole world would have been in one blaze of war. The result of French protection and English conversion still remains to be unfolded by time.

The other islands, though occasionally visited by European ships, are not as yet of sufficient commercial importance-with one remarkable exception-to warrant

their introduction into these pages. The Marquesas, we believe, still continue to resist the efforts of the missionaries, whether Protestant or Catholic, their wild inhabitants continuing idolators and cannibals to this day; while in the Friendly, Navigation, Hervey's, and various other groups a fair proportion of the inhabitants are already Christians.

CHAPTER II.

NEW ZEALAND.

THE exception alluded to at the conclusion of the last chapter is New Zealand, an island of the South Pacific, which although about twelve hundred miles distant from the new continent is, politically, one of the Australian colonies of Great Britain. We here arrive at a point where it is expedient that some change should take place in the plan of the present work. We have traversed the old regions whose manners and institutions belong to history; we have touched lightly upon the little fungi of the southern ocean, which have ripened in a hot-bed of European civilization, and grown up into a spongy and unwholesome maturity before our eyes; and we now arrive at a series of great countries without recollections, without stability, whose past is a blank, and whose present is a whirling chaos. The proper contributors to Australian history are as yet the journalists, who float on with the current of events, and whose aggregate labours will one

day supply what is wanting; but a Book, which would not at once grow out of date like a newspaper or a magazine, must confine itself, in a great measure, to general views, without aspiring to paint the protean forms of the time.

New Zealand was discovered in 1642 by the Dutch navigator Tasman, and visited by Cook in 1769; the latter giving his name to the strait which divides the two principal islands. Both these great captains found the natives fierce and inhospitable; and Cook killed four of them in an encounter sustained by the savages with heroic bravery. A French ship, however, about the same time, was received with much kindness, which the captain repaid by treacherously seizing and carrying off one of the chiefs; and in three years after, twenty-seven officers and men of the same nation, after being lulled into security by a show of confidence and friendship, were murdered and their bodies devoured. In 1773 ten more Frenchmen met the same fate, and their bodies the same unnatural tomb; and it was not till towards the close of the century that the formidable savages were prevailed upon to accept the advances of foreigners. By degrees, however, they submitted to their fate; and an amicable intercourse appeared to be completely established, when, in 1809, another terrific massacre-the slaughter of a whole ship's crew, consisting of nearly seventy persons, perpetrated on very slight provocation-appeared to interpose an impassable barrier between the two races. This barrier, notwithstanding, was overleaped by the heroism of the Church Missionaries, who commenced their labours in 1809; and in a wonderfully short time the beautiful deserts of New Zealand echoed not only to the songs of Zion, but to the cheerful voices of the ploughman and artisan.

While the gospel was thus spreading over the land, and the wild natives were acquiring at least the external habits of civilization, the government of Great Britain continued to look on passively at a spectacle so interesting even in a political aspect. New Zealand was a country as large as Great Britain and Ireland, with a population of only one hundred thousand souls, or one inhabitant to about seven hundred acres. It was, in fact, almost wholly unoccupied ground, and its fine climate, natural resources, and relative position to the Australian settlements, and the smaller islands of the Pacific, held out irresistible invitations to colonists. The misfortune was, that the invitations were accepted, in the first instance, by a class of persons who could bring with them only the vices and miseries of civilization,-deserters from ships, escaped convicts, and needy and worthless adventurers of all kinds, who were glad to leave behind the trammels of decent society, and the restrictions of regular government. In New Zealand the poorest found land, and the most vicious friends; and there being no law to restrain, they followed in the track of the missionaries, to devour like locusts the fruits of their pious toil.

In the mean time the attention of various influential persons in England was attracted towards these islands, and the irregular and vicious system of colonization under which they were suffering; and in 1825 a company was formed,-which at the time, however, had no results,for the purpose of founding a settlement of a better kind. Another society, still more respectable in means and number, was instituted in 1837, but they declined to proceed upon a royal charter without an act of parliament, and their bill was thrown out in the House of Commons. In 1839, as they had gone too far in their preparations to recede without loss, they would have been