Above all, it was in this visit to England that Mr. Marsden laid the foundations of the missions to New Zealand, and prepared to become the apostle of the Maori race. These great islands of New Zealand had been discovered and named by Tasman in 1642, and first visited by Captain Cook in 1769. He found them inhabited by a brave, high-spirited, and quick- witted set of natives, with as large a proportion of the fine qualities sometimes found in a wild race as ever savages possessed, but their tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs, fowls, and potatoes-no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time, whalers occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome, and characterized by mutual outrages, when, if a white man were made prisoner, he was sure to be killed and eaten, to serve as a sort of triumphal and sacrificial banquet.
Nevertheless, it was plain that these Maories were of a much higher type of humanity than the Australian natives, whom Mr. Marsden had found so far entirely unteachable and untameable, but for whom he was trying to establish some plan of training and protection. Such a spirit of curiosity and enterprise possessed some of the New Zealand chieftains, that they would come on visits to Australia, and on these occasions Mr. Marsden always gave them a welcome at his parsonage at Paramatta. At one time there were thirty staying there, over whom he had great influence. Once, when he was absent from home, the nephew of one of the chiefs died, and his uncle immediately prepared to sacrifice a slave; nor could Mrs. Marsden prevent it, otherwise than by hiding the intended victim till her husband came home, who made the chief understand that it was not to be done, though the man continued to lament that his nephew was deprived of his proper attendant in the other world, and seemed afraid to return home, lest the father of the youth should reproach him with the omission.
Mr. Marsden made known all that he had been able to gather of the promising nature of the field of labour in New Zealand, and sought aid from the Church Missionary Society, since the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was then unable to reach beyond the colonies. The almost universal indifference of the upper classes to missionary labour was terribly crippling in the matter of means; and perhaps the fact was that the underbred class of agents of the Societies stirred up by the example of Marshman and Carey, together with the vulgarly-sensational appeals against which Ward's good taste so strongly protested, greatly tended to make them incredulous. It was not till the statements of scholars and gentlemen, like Henry Martyn and Bishop Heber, became generally known, that the work was looked on without sarcasm, provoked by vulgarity, even where there was great devotion.
No clergyman could be found to undertake the mission to New Zealand; but William Hall and John King, two laymen, undertook to act as pioneers, with instructions to establish family worship, converse on religion with the natives, and instruct their children; trying, at the same time, to show the benefits of civilization, but to take care it was not confounded with Christianity.
These two good men, who were presently followed by Thomas Kendall, sailed in the same ship with Mr. Marsden, when, in August 1809, he paid his last farewell to his native land, and sailed in the Ann for New South Wales. Strange to say, this very ship contained a Maori, on his return home! He was a young chief named Duaterra, who had, in a spirit of adventure, embarked on board a whaler named the Argo, and worked as a sailor for six months, till the captain, having no further occasion for his services, put him ashore at Port Jackson, without payment or friends. However, he embarked in another whaler, and worked his way home, but soon was on board of a third English ship, the Santa Anna, in search of seal- skins, and having conceived a great desire to see the country whence these vessels came forth, and to know its chief, he engaged to come to England in it, the captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the Santa Anna reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George's house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on shore. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the Ann, to be taken back to Australia, and when he asked for his wages, to provide some clothing, told him that the owner of the ship would give him two muskets when he should reach Port Jackson.
The poor fellow was little likely to reach it, for lung disease, the great foe of the Maori, had set in; and he was in a pitiable condition when Mr. Marsden, by chance, remarked his brown face on the forecastle, and inquired into his history, which was confirmed by the master of the Ann, and was really only a specimen of a sailor's vague promises, and incapacity to understand that a dark skin ought to be treated with the same justice as a white one. Duaterra was a man of much intelligence, and even under these most unfavourable circumstances had been greatly impressed with the civilization of England, and was so desirous of improvement that, on arriving at Port Jackson, Mr. Marsden took him to his farm, where he applied eagerly to the learning of husbandry.
Duaterra was not the only Maori ill-treated by British sailors. Another chief having been used in like manner, or worse, on board the Boyd, bided his time till the ship was in the Bay of Islands, and then brought his tribe, armed with clubs and hatchets, to revenge his sufferings. They overpowered the crew, slaughtered and feasted upon them, burning the ship, and only retaining as captives two women and a boy. Nevertheless, Hall and King were ready to take the missionaries to this dangerous spot, but Mr. Marsden thought it best to give time for the passions thus excited to cool down.
Meantime Governor Macquarie had come out to take charge of New South Wales. He was a man of great determination and despotic will, and carried out many regulations that were of exceeding benefit to the colony, but he did not know the limits of his authority, dealt with the chaplains as with subordinate officials, and sometimes met with staunch opposition from the sturdy Yorkshireman, his senior chaplain, so that they were in a state of almost constant feud throughout his government, although at the end of his career he bore the strongest testimony to the merits of the only man who durst resist him. The old game of Ambrose and Theodosius, Hildebrand and Henry, Becket and Plantagenet, has to be played over and over again, wherever the State refuses to understand that spiritual matters lie beyond its grasp; and when Governor Macquarie prescribed the doctrines to be preached and the hymns to be used in the churches, and commanded the most unsuitable secular notices to be promulgated by the clergy, if Mr. Marsden had not resisted the Church would have been absolutely degraded. When convicts of wealth and station, but still leading most vicious lives, were raised to the magistrates' bench, Mr. Marsden could not but refuse to associate or act with them, and even tendered his resignation of the magistracy, but Macquarie would not accept it. How uncompromising these sermons were is evidenced by an anecdote of a man, who, being stung to the quick, fancied that the words had been individually aimed at him, and determined to be revenged. Accordingly, as soon as he saw the chaplain riding near a piece of water he jumped in, and when Mr. Marsden at once sprung after him, did his utmost to drown his intended deliverer; but after a violent struggle the Yorkshire muscles prevailed, and the man was dragged out, so startled by the shock that he confessed his intention, and, under the counsel he had so fiercely spurned at first, became truly penitent, and warmly attached to Mr. Marsden, whose service he ultimately entered.