unknown land.  Captain Vancouver, in 1791, took shelter in Dusky Bay, in the sounds of the South Island.  Cook had named an unsurveyed part of that region Nobody-Knows-What.  Vancouver surveyed it and gave it its present name, Somebody-Knows-What.  But the chief act for which his name is noted in New Zealand history is his connection with the carrying off of two young Maoris—­a chief and a priest—­to teach the convicts of the Norfolk Island penal settlement how to dress flax.  Vancouver had been asked by the Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island to induce two Maoris to make the voyage.  He therefore sent an officer in a Government storeship to New Zealand, whose notion of inducement was to seize the first Maoris he could lay hands on.  The two captives, it may be mentioned, scornfully refused to admit any knowledge of the “woman’s work” of flax-dressing.  Soothed by Lieutenant-Governor King, they were safely restored by him to their people loaded with presents.  When in Norfolk Island, one of them, at King’s request, drew a map of New Zealand, which is of interest as showing how very little of his country a Maori of average intelligence then knew.  Of even more interest to us is it to remember that the kindly Lieutenant-Governor’s superior officer censured him for wasting time—­ten whole days—­in taking two savages back to their homes.

For two generations after Cook the English Government paid no attention to the new-found land.  What with losing America, and fighting the French, it had its hands full.  It colonized Australia with convicts—­and found it a costly and dubious experiment.  The Government was well satisfied to ignore New Zealand.  But adventurous English spirits were not The islands ceased to be inaccessible when Sydney became an English port, from which ships could with a fair wind make the Bay of Islands in eight or ten days.  In the seas round New Zealand were found the whale and the fur-seal.  The Maoris might be cannibals, but they were eager to trade.  In their forests grew trees capable of supplying first-class masts and spars.  Strange weapons, ornaments, and cloaks, were offered by the savages, as well as food and the dressed fibre of the native flax.  An axe worth ten shillings would buy three spars worth ten pounds in Sydney.  A tenpenny nail would purchase a large fish.  A musket and a little powder and lead were worth a ton of scraped flax.  Baskets of potatoes would be brought down and ranged on the sea-beach three deep.  The white trader would then stretch out enough calico to cover them.  The strip was their price.  The Maoris loved the higgling of the market, and would enjoy nothing better than to spend half a day over bartering away a single pig.  Moreover, a peculiar and profitable, if ghastly, trade sprang up in tattooed heads.  A well-preserved specimen fetched as much as twenty pounds, and a man “with a good head on his shoulders” was consequently worth that sum to any one who could kill him.  Contracts for the sale of heads of men still living