[1895-1907 A.D.]

property regarded as the future Britain of the southern hemisphere. The progress which the colony has made has both encouraged and apparently justified the prediction. Yet there are few subjects on which ordinary people betray greater ignorance than on the position of New Zealand. Sir Charles Dilkem has pointed out that, though "the future of the Pacific shores is inevitably brilliant, it is not New Zealand, the centre of the water hemisphere, which will occupy the position that England has taken in the Atlantic, but some country such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into the ocean from Asia or America, as England juts out from Europe." New Zealand, separated from Australia by more than a thousand miles of stormy ocean, can never prove to Australia what England has proved to Europe. Her own advantages of soil and climate may raise her to greatness. She will not rise to greatness as the emporium of Australian trade. i

The election on December 6th, 1905, resulted in an overwhelming majority for the Seddon ministry. In the following June Mr. Seddon died suddenly while returning from a visit to Australia. A ministry was formed by Sir Joseph Ward to follow Mr. Seddon's policy. In September, 1907, a royal proclamation was issued to the effect that the colony should henceforth be called the Dominion of New Zealand.a

The Maoris

The Maoris are one of the most important families of the brown Polynesian stock, being those who have developed its peculiar mental and physical characteristics to the highest

degree. This is due in part to their having to maintain themselves in a far less favourable climate than their fellows of the tropical islands. They became skilful hunters and fishers, and good agriculturists; and the amount of skill and energy necessitated in these pursuits in building houses and canoes, in making clothing, and in forming the various weapons

and implements which they required from stone, wood, or shell, furnished the needful stimulus for an active and healthy existence. War, too, as among all savage tribes, occupied them greatly, and the construction of forts and defences was added to the regular labours of every community.

The earliest European settlers thus found the Maoris in a state of civilisation not often to be met with among a barbarous and savage people. They lived together in villages, in huts well constructed of wood and reeds, ornamented with ingenious and fanciful carvings, and painted with gay-coloured arabesques. They protected their villages with ditches and palisades, and surrounded them with extensive plantations. They manufactured flax from a native plant, and from it wove mats and clothing, which they dyed with various kinds of bark and roots, and ornamented with the bright feathers of birds; and they made cloaks of great value from the dressed skins of their dogs. Their faces and some parts of their bodies were elaborately and elegantly tattooed, more largely in the men than the women, and the heads of

[1907-1908 A.D.]

the great chiefs were skillfully embalmed and preserved, either as trophies of the fight or in affectionate remembrance of the dead. Although they had no written language, they had numerous songs and proverbs, legends and traditions, transmitted orally from generation to generation. They knew every plant and bird and insect of the country they inhabited, and designated them by distinctive names; and they distinguished the various kinds of rock with a keen talent of observation. They had words in their language for the four seasons, and they divided the year into thirteen months, all of which had appropriate names, the year commencing with the first new moon after a particular star, called Puanga, began to be visible in the morning. They had names for all the chief stars, and also for many constellations, which were called after their resemblance to canoes, houses, garments, weapons, etc. They had measures derived from the human body, as the span, the stride, and the fathom. They had no regular barter, but whatever a friend asked for was given, on the understanding that the giver might in his turn have anything he took a fancy to; but all valuable property appears to have been held by the tribe, and could only be exchanged in this way with other family tribes. They had numerous games of skill or chance, many of them exactly similar to our own, as flying kites, skipping-ropes, cat's-cradle, gymnastic poles, wrestling, hide-and-seek, stilts; as well as dancing, diving, and many others. They had a firm belief in a future state, and an elaborate mythology and system of temples, priests, omens, and sacrifices. They were great orators, and a son of every chief had to learn the traditions, laws, and rites of his tribe, and to be an orator and a poet as well as a warrior, a hunter, and

a seaman.

The dark side of their character was the practice of cannibalism, which prevailed extensively at the time when Europeans first visited them. But this vile practice seems always to have been associated with a superstitious belief in the transfer of the qualities of the victim to his devourer. This became one of the chief incentives to war, as to eat the bodies of the slain was supposed to impart courage and ferocity to those who partook of them, and likewise to make their triumph over their enemies complete.k

The rapid decrease of the Maori population for many years seemed to foretell its early extinction as a race, but during very recent years there appears to have been a slight increase in numbers. In 1840 estimates placed the native population at over 100,000, which had decreased to 65,000 in 1856 and to 45,740 in 1874. By 1896 the Maori population was only 39,800, but in 1901 it had risen again to 43,143.a

THE Cape of Good Hope was discovered by Bartholomeu Dias, the Portuguese navigator, in 1487. He first landed at Algoa Bay, having, after exploring the west coast, been driven out to sea by a storm. Thus accidentally doubling the Cape, he saw it on his way back, and gave it the name of the Cape of Storms (Cabo Tormentoso). The king of Portugal, however, gave it the more auspicious name it now bears, as its discovery afforded a hope of a new and easier way of reaching India, the great obj.ct of all the maritime expeditions of that age.

The great navigator Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape in 1497, and carried the Portuguese flag into the Indian seas. His countrymen, however, attracted by the riches of the East, made no permanent settlement at the Cape, although they frequently touched there on the voyage to India. But the Dutch, who, on the decline of the Portuguese power, established themselves in the East, early saw the importance of the place as a station where their vessels might take in water and provisions. They did not, however, colonise it till 1652, when the Dutch East India Company directed Jan van Riebeek, with a small party of colonists, to form a settlement there. The country was at that time inhabited by a people called Quæquæ, but to whom the Dutch seem to have given the name of Hottentots. The Riebeek settlers had at first great difficulties and hardships to endure, and their territory did not extend beyond a few miles round the site of the present Cape Town, where they first fixed their abode. They gradually, however, extended their limits, by driving the natives back or reducing them to serfdom. These colonists, although under Dutch authority, were not wholly of that nation, but consisted partly of persons of various nations, especially Germans and Flemings, with a few

[1686-1835 A.D.] Poles and Portuguese. They were for the most part people of low station or indifferent character; there was, however, a small number of a higher class, from whom was selected a council to assist the governor. About the year 1686 the European population was increased by a number of the French refugees who left their country on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Our limits forbid our attempting to trace the history of the Cape Colony during the lengthened period it remained under the Dutch government. We may, however, mention some of its prominent incidents, the effects of which are visible in the colony to this hour.

The Dutch, partly by so-called contracts, partly by force, gradually deprived the Hottentots of their country. They reduced to slavery a large part of that unfortunate people whom they did not destroy. They introduced a number of Malays and negroes as slaves. They established that narrow and tyrannical system of policy which they adopted in other colonies, prescribing to the farmers the nature of the crops they were to grow, demanding from them a large part of their produce, and harassing them with other exactions tending to discourage industry and enterprise. There is no doubt that to this mischievous policy is due the origin of those unsettled habits, that dislike to orderly government, and that desire to escape from its control, which characterise a considerable part of the so-called Dutch Boers of the present day-qualities utterly at variance with the character of the Dutch in their native country, which were strongly manifested at the Cape, long before they came under British rule and under those influences to which some exclusively attribute the insubordination of those men. The attempts of the Boers to escape from the Dutch power, and so form an independent government beyond the borders of the colony, especially in the district since called Graaf-Reinet, are strikingly similar to their proceedings at a later date under the British government. The Gumti river formed the boundary between the Hottentot and Kaffir races, and was early adopted by the Dutch as their eastern limit; but about the year 1740 they began to pass this river, and came into collision with the Kaffirs, and in 1780 they extended their frontier to the Great Fish river.

In 1795 the colonists, having imbibed the revolutionary principles then prevailing in Europe, attempted to throw off the yoke of the Dutch, upon which the British sent a fleet to support the authority of the prince of Orange, and took possession of the country in his name. As, however, it was evident that Holland would not be able to hold it, and that at a general peace it would be made over to England, it was ruled by British governors till the year 1802, when, at the Peace of Amiens, it was again restored to Holland. In 1806, on the renewal of the war, it was again taken by the British under Sir David Baird, and has since remained in their possession, having been finally ceded by the king of the Netherlands at the peace of 1815. At this time the limit of the colony was formed by the Great Fish river and the line of the mountains south of Bushman Land to the Buffals river and the Atlantic, the area being about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles, and the population little over sixty thousand. A summary may be given of the chief events which have taken place since 1806.

KAFFIR WARS AND THE GREAT TREK

The first of these wars took place in 1811-1812, and the second in 1819, when the boundary of the colony was extended to the Keiskamma. The third occurred in 1835, under Sir Benjamin d'Urban, when the boundary was

[1835-1854 A.D.]

advanced to the Kei; but on the recall of that officer the country between the Kei and Keiskamma rivers was restored to the Kaffirs. The fourth Kaffir War took place in 1846, and after being conducted by governors Maitland and Pottinger, it was terminated by Sir Harry Smith in 1848. The fifth war broke out at the end of 1850, and after being carried on for some time by Governor Sir H. Smith, it was conducted in 1852 by Governor Cathcart, and brought to a conclusion only in March, 1853. During its progress an armed police had been organised for the protection of the frontier, and British Kaffraria was subsequently formed into a crown colony, reserved at first for occupation by Kaffirs.

In 1820, British emigrants, to the number of five thousand, arrived at Algoa Bay, and laid the foundation of the settlements on the eastern frontier which have since become the most thriving part of the colony, including the important towns of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth. In 1834 the great measure of slave-emancipation took effect in the Cape Colony. It has been of immense service in raising the character and condition of the Hottentots and other races before held in bondage, though many of the vices begotten by the state of slavery still adhere to them. This measure gave great offence to the Dutch Boers of the colony, and completed their already existing disaffection to the British rule.

In 1835-1836 a large number of these people resolved to free themselves from the British government by removing with their families beyond the limits of the colony. With this object they sold their farms, mostly at a great sacrifice, and crossed the Orange river into territories inhabited chiefly by tribes of the Kaffir race. After meeting with great hardships and varied success in their contests with the natives, a part of their number, under one Peter Retief, crossed the Drakenberge and took possession of the district of Natal, where they established a republican government, and maintained their ground against powerful nations of Zulu Kaffirs till 1842, when they were forced to yield to the authority of the British government, which took possession of Natal.

The Boers beyond the Orange river and west of the Drakenberge still, however, retained a sort of independence till 1848, when, in consequence of the lawless state of the country, and the solicitation of part of the inhabitants, the governor, Sir Harry Smith, declared the supremacy of the crown over the territory, which was thenceforth called the Orange River Sovereignty. Shortly after this, in consequence, it was alleged, of certain acts of the British government in Natal, Andrew Pretorius, an intelligent Boer of that district, crossed the Drakenberge mountains with his followers, and after being joined on the western side by large numbers of disaffected Boers, raised the standard of rebellion. Upon this the governor, Sir H. Smith, crossed the Orange river at the head of a detachment of troops, and encountered and defeated the rebels. in a short but brilliant skirmish at Boem Plaats. After this Pretorius and the most disaffected part of the Boers retreated to beyond the Vaal river (the northern limit of the sovereignty), where they established a government of their own. They were subsequently, in 1852, absolved from their allegiance to the British crown by treaty with the governors and her majesty's commissioners for settling frontier affairs.

In 1853-1854, in consequence of the troubled state of the Orange River Sovereignty, and the difficulty of maintaining with becoming dignity the authority of her majesty there, it was resolved to abandon the country to the settlers, mostly Dutch Boers. This was carried into effect by a special commissioner, Sir George Clerk, sent from England for the purpose; and the