At first the trade was in axes, knives, and other edge-tools,
beads, and ornaments, but in 1832 the Maoris would scarcely take
anything but arms and ammunition, red woollen shirts, and tobacco.
Every man in a native hapu had to procure a musket, or die. If the
warriors of the hapu had no guns they would soon be all killed by
some tribe that had them. The price of one gun, together with the
requisite powder, was one ton of cleaned flax, prepared by the women
and slaves in the sickly swamps. In the meantime the food crops were
neglected, hunger and hard labour killed many, some fell victims to
diseases introduced by the white men, and the children nearly all
died.
And the Maoris are still dying out of the land, blighted by our
civilization. They were willing to learn and to be taught, and they
began to work with the white men. In 1853 I saw nearly one hundred
of them, naked to the waist, sinking shafts for gold on Bendigo, and
no Cousin Jacks worked harder. We could not, of course, make them
Englishmen--the true Briton is born, not made; but could we not
have kept them alive if we had used reasonable means to do so? Or is
it true that in our inmost souls we wanted them to die, that we might
possess their land in peace?
Besides flax, it was found that New Zealand produced most excellent
timber--the kauri pine.
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