The natives have considerable talent for the mechanical arts, and a great inclination to cultivate their minds. Cook found among them war canoes, which were 80 feet long, and constructed with considerable ingenuity. They have applied themselves successfully to the acquisi tion of the various trades introduced by Europeans, are good farmers, and bold and skilful seamen. There are now few natives who have not learned to read and write ; and even those who live in parts of the country which have only occasionally been visited by missionaries, have acquired these elements of civilisation by mutual instruction.
The governor, Sir George Grey, writes of the natives in 1850, iu his Report to the British Secretary of State, in terms of high commenda tion, in reference to their industrial capabilities, their desire for mental improvement, their agreeable manners, their moral character, and their material prosperity.
History and Oolonisation.—Thera is reason for supposing that some Spanish navigators discovered New Zealand iu the 16th century, but nothing is on record which can prove it. We must therefore consider that the islands were discovered by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman, who, in December, 1642, reached the west coast of Tavai-Poenammoo, near 42° 10' S. lat. He sailed along the coast northward, and entered the western entrance of Cook Strait in the wide open bay called on our maps Blind Bay, but by the Frenchman D'Urville, Tasman Bay. Here he anchored in a harbour, which he called Massacre Bay, as four of his seamen were killed there by the natives. From that time New Zea land was considered a part of the Australian continent by the geographers of the period. No European seems to have visited it till the time of Cook, who in his first voyage spent nearly six months on the coasts, in 1769 and 1770, during which he circumnavigated the islands and surveyed the coasts. In December 1769, a French ship commanded by Surville anchored for some time in Doubtless Bay, as it ie called by Cook, but which Surville named Lauristou Bay ; and in 1772 two French vessels, under the command of Marion and Crozet, sailed along the west coast of New Ulster, and remained for some time in the Bay of Islands, where Marion and 27 Frenchmen were killed by the natives. Cook visited New Zealand in his second voyage three times, and in his third voyage for the fifth time. Vancouver also visited it in 1791, but merchant-vessels came to it only towards the close of the last century. In fact, these remote seas were hardly visited by trading-vessels before the foundation of the British colony at Port Jackson in Australia.
When the colony at Port Jackson had gone through its first trial and began to rise, it became the centre of a new branch of commercial industry. Before the end of the last ceotury a few vessels, English and American, departing from Port Jackson, began to prosecute the whale-fishery in the sea east of New Zealand. As the number of whales was immense their success was very great, and they soon learned that provisions and other necessaries of life were to be got much cheaper and with less labour in New Zealand than at Sydney, and thus New Zealand began to be the resort of the whalers, who visited the Bay of Islands in preference to all other parte on account of its geographical position and the excellence of its harbour. To facilitate the intercourse between tho natives and the crews of these vessels, a few English settled in that harbour and in some others on the east coast, About the same period the New Zealand flax began to be considered a useful article both in England and in New South Wales, and many vessels visited the islands to procure it. The tracts PAoresiseus tea= grows in greatest abundance are situated on the west shores of New Ulster; and settlements were made there in order to get cargoes for the vessels whose arrival was expected. During the first twenty years of the present century the coasts of New Munster and of Cook Strait were overrun by sealers in every direction, who caught many thousand seals every season ; the skins were sent to China, where they fetched a high price. When the seals began to fail the whale-fishery in Cook Strait was established. Thla led to the settlement of several Englishmen on the shores of the strait, and thus a considerable number of Englishmen had become domiciled in New Zealand at an early period. Most of them married native females, and finding that the country possessed a considerable degree of fertility, and that immense tracts were not cultivated, they began to acquire landed property before a regular colony had been established. Meanwhile the Church Missionary Society had directed its attention to the natives of New Zealand, aud sent several mission aries in 1314. They were soon followed by some Wesleyan and Roman Catholio missionaries, and though their labours were not attended with immediate success, they ultimately succeeded, and at present the native. are nearly all at least nominally Christiana.