atives. They took the _Endeavour_ for a gigantic white-winged
sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors
gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. Yet,
when Cook and a boat's crew landed, a defiant war-chief at once
threatened the boat, and persisted until he was shot dead. Almost all
Cook's attempts to trade and converse with the Maoris ended in the
same way--a scuffle and a musket-shot. Yet the savages were never
cowed, and came again. They were shot for the smallest thefts. Once
Cook fired on the crew of a canoe merely for refusing to stop and
answer questions about their habits and customs, and killed four of
them--an act of which he calmly notes that he himself could not, on
reflection, approve. On the other hand he insisted on discipline, and
flogged his sailors for robbing native plantations. For that age he
was singularly humane, and so prudent that he did not lose a man on
his first and most troubled visit to New Zealand. During this voyage
he killed ten Maoris. Later intercourse was much more peaceful, though
Captain Furneaux, of Cook's consort, the _Adventure_, less lucky, or
less cautious, lost an entire boat's crew, killed and eaten.

Cook himself was always able to get wood and water for his ships, and
to carry on his surveys with such accuracy and deliberation that they
remained the standard authority on the outlines of the islands for
some seventy years. He took possession of the country in the name of
George the Third. Some of its coast-names still recall incidents of
his patient voyaging. "Young Nick's Head" is the point which the boy
Nicholas Young sighted on the 6th of October, 1769--the first bit of
New Zealand seen by English eyes. At Cape Runaway the Maoris, after
threatening an attack, ran away from a discharge of firearms. At Cape
Kidnappers they tried to carry off Cook's Tahitian boy in one of
their canoes. A volley, which killed a Maori, made them let go their
captive, who dived into the sea and swam back to the _Endeavour_ half
crazed with excitement at his narrow escape from a New Zealand oven.
The odd name of the very fertile district of Poverty Bay reminds us
that Cook failed to get there the supplies he obtained at the Bay of
Plenty. At Goose Cove he turned five geese ashore; at Mercury Bay he
did astronomical work. On the other hand, Capes North, South, East,
and West, and Capes Brett, Saunders, Stephens, and Jackson, Rock's
Point, and Black