ld Cook that, years before the _Endeavour_ first entered
Poverty Bay, a ship had visited the northern side of Cook's Strait and
stayed there some time, and that a half-caste son of the captain was
still living. In one of his later voyages, the navigator was informed
that a European vessel had lately been wrecked near the same part of
the country, and that the crew, who reached the shore, had all been
clubbed after a desperate resistance. It is likely enough that many a
roving mariner who touched at the islands never informed the world of
his doings, and had, indeed, sometimes excellent reasons for secrecy.
Still, for many years after the misadventure of Marion du Fresne, the
more prudent Pacific skippers gave New Zealand a wide berth. When
D'Entrecasteaux, the French explorer, in his voyage in search of the
ill-fated _La Perouse_, lay off the coast in 1793, he would not even
let a naturalist, who was on one of his frigates, land to have a
glimpse of the novel flora of the wild and 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 Americ