ay, whose green and pleasant
shores were backed by high snow-capped mountains. Several canoes came
off from the beach filled by Maoris, who lay about a stone's throw
distant and sounded their war trumpets. The Dutch replied by a flourish
of their horns. For several days the Maoris would come no nearer, but on
the sixth they paddled out with seven canoes and surrounded both
vessels. Tasman noticed that they were crowding in a somewhat
threatening manner round one of his ships, the _Heemskirk_, and he sent
a small boat with seven men to warn the captain to be on his guard. When
the Maoris saw these seven men without weapons sailing past their canoes
they fell on them, instantly killed three and began to drag away their
bodies; no doubt to be eaten. The other four Dutchmen, by diving and
swimming, escaped and reached the ship half dead with fright. Then with
shouts the whole line of Maori canoes advanced to attack the ships; but
a broadside startled them. They were stupefied for a moment at the
flash and roar of the cannon and the crash of the wood-work of their
canoes; then they turned and fled, carrying with them, however, one of
the bodies. Tasman sailed down into Cook Strait, which he very naturally
took to be a bay, the weather being too thick for him to see the passage
to the south-east. He then returned and coasted northwards to the
extreme point of New Zealand, which he called Cape Maria Van Diemen,
probably after the wife of that Governor of Batavia who had sent out the
expedition. Tasman called the lands he had thus discovered "New
Zealand," after that province of Holland which is called Zealand, or the
Sea-land. The bay in which he had anchored was called Murderers' or
Massacre Bay.

#4. Captain Cook.#--For more than a hundred years New Zealand had no white
men as visitors. It was in 1769 that Captain Cook, on his way home from
Tahiti, steering to the south-west in the hope of discovering new lands,
saw the distant hills of New Zealand. Two days later he landed on the
east coast of the North Island, a little north of Hawke Bay. There lay
the little ship the _Endeavour_ at anchor, with its bulging sides afloat
on a quiet bay, in front a fertile but steeply sloping shore with a pah
on the crown of a hill, and a few neat little houses by the side of a
rapid stream. In the evening Cook, Banks, and other gentlemen took the
pinnace and rowed up the streamlet. They landed, leaving some boys in
charge of the boat, and