Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/215

Rh of the last century and the beginning of this many American and English whalers visited New Zealand, and year by year the knowledge of the country was increased. Visitors usually got along well enough with the natives, and were kindly treated; whenever there were encounters with the New Zealanders they were generally caused by the misconduct of the visitors themselves. Thus, in 1809, the captain of the English ship Boyd flogged and otherwise ill-treated a native chief, and the followers of the latter took a terrible revenge by killing no less than seventy of the crew and passengers.



"On some parts of the coast the natives were for a long time hostile, probably in consequence of outrages that had been committed by whale-men and others. Some of their ideas of the white men were curious. The natives paddle their boats with their faces towards the bow, and when they saw the foreign boats coming to the shore they thought the men had eyes in the backs of their heads because they rowed with their backs in the direction of their course. Some of them thought the ships were great birds, and their boats the birdlets or chicks.

"As in Polynesia, the missionaries were the pioneers of civilization