a, 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 are said to have been entered into
between chiefs and traders, and the heads to have been duly delivered
"as per agreement." Hitherto hung up as trophies of victory in the
_pas_, these relics of battle were quickly turned to account, at first
for iron, then for muskets, powder, and lead. When the natural supply
of heads of slain enemies ran short, slaves, who had hitherto never
been allowed the aristocratic privilege and dignity of being tattooed,
had their faces prepared for the market. Sometimes, it is recorded, a
slave, after months of painful preparation, had the audacity to run
away with his own head before the day of sale and decapitation. Astute
vendors occasionally tried the more merciful plan of tattooing "plain"
heads after death in ordinary course of battle. But this was a species
of fraud, as the lines soon became indistinct. Such heads have often
been indignantly pointed at by enthusiastic connoiss