HISTORY – DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION

The discovery and exploration of New Zealand were accomplished, in the main, in the century that followed James Cook's first voyage of 1769. It is true that an earlier navigator, Abel Janszoon Tasman, sailed along part of the western coastline a century and a half before, and true that the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the continued exploration of the more remote areas, but these activities dwindle beside the immense achievements of the century following 1769.

Some general points may be made at the outset. First, though it is convenient to associate discovery with the coastline, and exploration with the interior, these categories constantly overlap in a single continuous process: discoverers explore and explorers discover. Secondly, as history depends upon documents, the role of those who set their feats down in writing is necessarily exaggerated: literate missionaries become more celebrated than less articulate whalers, sealers, traders, and wanderers. Thirdly, among those who left few or no documents, first place must be given to the Maori: the great majority of explorers depended upon them. No region of New Zealand, except the great peaks and glaciers of the Southern Alps, was explored without benefit either of Maori advice or of Maori guides. It is abundantly clear that the Maoris knew their country well before the “discoverer” and “explorer” arrived, but they had no written language and they made no maps.

Finally, though this does not belittle the men of science, we must note that scientific curiosity is not the dominant motive behind the whole process. Missionaries sought souls; whalers, sealers, and traders sought profits; administrators, pastoralists, and prospectors wanted farm land and goldfields. Especially after 1840, the stimulus behind the exploration of this country was the pressure of population upon resources, as settlements steadily multiplied and expanded.

Discovery by Tasman

Tasman does little more than speak the prologue. The Dutch East India Company, his master, was more interested in profits than in mere knowledge. The voyage of 1642 was sent out by Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, whose attention was drawn south by Franz Jacobs-zoon Visscher, a man of genuine scientific curiosity. Visscher speculated, as had European geographers over a lengthy period, upon the “demonstrable” existence of a great continent in the unknown south. Van Diemen was concerned to command its trade, if it were there; he was also interested in Australia, at that time known only in part, and in the Solomon Islands, discovered by Mendana in 1568 and not since visited. Tasman, accompanied by Visscher, was given two small ships, neither in very good condition, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen, to go first to Mauritius and then east until, if it should so chance, he fetched up on the coast of the southern continent. Civilised men, if found, were to be treated with an eye to trade and the acquisition of gold or other precious metals.

In due course, sailing east, Tasman came to the island he called Van Diemen's Landt (Tasmania). Sailing further east over the sea named after him, Tasman saw, on 13 December 1642, the coast and mountains of a new land. He had, in fact, sighted the west coast of the South Island between Hokitika and Okarito. He turned north, followed the coast past Cape Foulwind into the Karamea Bight, around Cape Farewell, and into a peaceful bay. Here smoke was first seen on the shore; on 17 December, the two ships came to anchor. This bay is now called Golden Bay, but Tasman soon had reason to label it Murderers' Bay. His ships were inspected by canoes manned by men neither civilised nor friendly, savages who would not be interested in trade goods. It seems likely that the local Maoris gathered their forces to meet this menace – eventually no fewer than 22 canoes were seen. On 19 December, as a cockboat was going between the ships, it was set upon and four sailors were killed. The canoes were kept off the ships by gunshot, and one Maori was seen to have been hit. Tasman, unusually forbearing, left without setting foot on the shore.

His course took him into Cook Strait, but the winds prevented an examination of the coast which, it was realised, might reveal a passage east. Tasman named the new land Staten Landt, in honour of the States-General, and also because, were this the coast of the southern continent (as Tasman thought it well might be) it could be connected with that Staten Landt discovered in 1616 to the south of South America.

The ships then sailed up the western coast of the North Island, rounding Cape Egmont, and reaching Cape Maria van Diemen on 4 January 1643. Here Tasman resolved to land on the island he named Three Kings, for it was the eve of the season of Epiphany, to find water and vegetables. The boats were sent heavily armed, for warlike savages were seen on shore, but the surf, wind, and rocks prevented a landing. Tasman was back in Batavia in June 1643, having discovered Tonga and Fiji on the way.

The voyage had been a notable feat of discovery and seamanship, but it promised no commercial reward, and Dutch attention did not turn that way again. The name Staten Landt did not stick; in some way the name Nieuw Zeeland became attached to the coastline that Tasman had drawn, and that line, still possibly the edge of the southern continent, found its way into the atlases, and waited until Cook should complete it and correct it.

Cook's Voyages

The motives behind Cook's voyages, on the first of which he rediscovered New Zealand, were almost wholly scientific. His initial task was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, at Tahiti. That done, he was to take the Endeavour south in search of the southern continent, or else to explore the eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman. On 6 October 1769 a boy sighted land, a cape named Young Nick's Head in his honour by Cook. The ship was anchored in a bay – Poverty Bay – and Cook, with Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, two notable botanists who were making the voyage with him, went ashore. They could talk with the Maoris, thanks to the presence of a Tahitian, Tupaia, but this did not prevent bloodshed. The deaths which resulted from this initial affray were perhaps necessary, unless European lives were to be lost, but Cook was distressed. Some prisoners, taken in the affray, were well treated and put ashore. Canoes came out to the ship as it moved south around Table Cape, the great bay he called Hawke's Bay, and to Cape Kidnappers, so named to commemorate an attempt of some Maoris to snatch a Tahitian boy from the ship. Looking for a harbour and noting evidence of a considerable population, Cook went as far south as Cape Turnagain, and then sailed north. Five days were spent at Tolaga Bay, filling water casks, collecting vegetables, botanising, and observing the Maoris, with whom friendly relations this time persisted. After this respite the Endeavour rounded East Cape, scared off some hostile canoes at Hicks Bay, and entered the Bay of Plenty. The initial phase of discovery came to an end with the 11 days spent at Mercury Bay on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. Here Cook took on water, wood, and vegetables, observed the transit of Mercury to fix his position exactly, and closely examined Maori life.

On 15 November Cook sailed north again, after a wholly friendly and profitable interlude, and having taken possession of the country in the name of the king. He rounded Cape Colville and sailed into the gulf which, together with its river, he called the Thames, turned north with the coast, and was prevented by bad weather from noting the existence of off-shore islands and of Waitemata harbour. He named Cape Brett, went as far north as the Cavalli Islands, and south again to the Bay of Islands, where he paused for some days, going ashore where, after an initial skirmish, he established good relations with the numerous and warlike natives. On 6 December the Endeavour put out to sea again.

A week later she was for the first time out of sight of land. Though held up by adverse weather, Cook managed to fix exactly the positions of North Cape, Three Kings and (on New Year's Day, 1770) Cape Maria van Diemen. He sailed, out of sight of land, as far as the entrance to Kaipara Harbour, and turned north along a barren coast. Cook then returned past Kawhia Harbour, and around the cape and mountain both of which he called Egmont. He followed the line of the coast until he came up against the high and broken coast of the South Island. He had in fact entered Cook Strait, and almost completed his circumnavigation of the North Island, though this was not yet known. On 14 January he put into a cove, since known as Ship Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound, for wood, water, and repairs.

While in this haven, which was to be Cook's base on future voyages, the ship was set to rights, the crew refreshed, and botanical specimens collected by Banks and Solander. The natives proved friendly, after some initial trouble, and one of them described to Cook the shape and size of New Zealand as he knew it. Cook explored by boat and on foot; from one peak he saw the ocean stretching away to the east and the strait separating the North from the South Island. He named Queen Charlotte Sound, and took possession of adjacent lands in the name of the king. The Endeavour left the sound on 6 February.

Cook cleared the strait, and to make it abundantly clear that the North Island was an island, sailed north to Cape Turnagain. He then turned south, observing the Seaward Kaikoura Range running parallel with the coast, went past Kaikoura Peninsula and on to Banks Peninsula, taken, because of the low-lying land separating its peaks from the mainland, for an island. A diversion to the south-east (an officer thought he saw land in this direction) took him out of sight of the coast which he regained on February 19. Cape Saunders (Otago Peninsula) was named, and the south-east coast of Otago regained after the ship was taken out to sea by bad weather. After some hesitation the island, later called Stewart Island, was charted as a peninsula. The southern coast was rounded, West Cape named, and the voyage up the west coast of the South Island commenced. Dusky Bay and Doubtful Harbour were named and passed, and the later part of March saw the Endeavour off the coast charted in the seventeenth century by Tasman. She passed Cape Foulwind and Cape Farewell, and sailed into Cook Strait to the entrance of Queen Charlotte Sound, thus completing the circumnavigation of the South Island. On 27 March Cook anchored in Admiralty Bay, to take on water and wood, and prepare for the long voyage home. Five days later Cook left New Zealand.

As a result of this voyage, New Zealand, in a real sense of the word, became known. Cook's chart was unusually complete and accurate; future discoverers could do no more than tidy up his outline. Something about the interior was known; that the North Island was the more fertile and the South more mountainous. Thanks to Banks and Solander, the flora and fauna had been scientifically observed. Thanks to Cook and Banks, some useful observations on the nature and habits of the Maoris had been set down. Two resources of the country, timber and flax, were described. Whether Cook's successors proved to be traders, missionaries, scientists, or settlers, they had something upon which to build.

He was to revisit New Zealand and use it as a base during his second and third voyages, voyages concerned with the exploration of the whole Pacific Ocean. In April 1773, on the Resolution, he entered Dusky Sound to refit the ship and recruit the crew. The Sound was meticulously charted. In May he left for Ship Cove, there to meet Tobias Furneaux and the Adventure; in June the two ships sailed east to find no continent, but to discover islands in the Pacific. Both ships, off Cook Strait again in October, parted company in a storm, and the Resolution, after pausing outside Port Nicholson, retired to Queen Charlotte Sound. In November Cook left for the Antarctic Ocean. Furneaux, who had been blown well north, reached the Sound soon after Cook departed and lost 10 of his men in an affray with the natives. Cook himself returned in October 1774, after a voyage which left no possible resting place for the southern continent, to discover the Tory Channel outlet to the Sound. His third visit, during his voyage in February 1777, was his last. Two years later he was killed at Hawaii.

Cook's Successors

The remaining voyages are all peripheral to Cook's achievement. Jean Francois Marie de Surville, sailing from India in 1769, sighted the North Island coast just south of Hokianga in December, while Cook was off the opposite coast, and had a clear sight of the extreme northerly coast. At Doubtless Bay he treated the Maoris with disproportionate severity and, with a captive chief, left for Peru. The chief died at sea, and de Surville was drowned on his arrival.

A second Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, accomplished little actual discovery on his tragic voyage of 1772, apart from a chart of the Bay of Islands, but his murder with a dozen of his men, and the French retaliation (about 200 Maoris were killed), has the dubious distinction of being the most violent episode in the early history of racial contact in New Zealand. Nearly 20 years later, another Englishman, George Vancouver (a midshipman on the Resolution in 1773) spent three weeks in October 1791 in Dusky Sound, correcting Cook's chart. There were two ships in this voyage, which was primarily concerned with the exploration of the American coast: Vancouver's Discovery and the Chatham commanded by William Broughton. Broughton, in November, discovered and took possession of the Chatham Islands.

By the 1790s the men of science were being overtaken by the men of commerce. The first sealing gang set up at Dusky Sound in 1792, and in the next two decades the sealers explored the southern coast, the Auckland, Campbell, and Macquarie Islands, and Foveaux Strait. This last important deliberate discovery was the work of an American, Owen F. Smith. Before the final voyage of discovery, that of Dumont d'Urville in 1826, many significant minor discoveries had been made, and the exploration of the interior had commenced. The Pegasus in 1809 discovered the true nature of Banks Peninsula, while in 1813 Robert Williams explored Bluff Harbour and the adjacent interior. In 1826 the ships of the first New Zealand Company under the command of James Herd, proved better at discovery than colonisation by charting Otago Harbour and Port Nicholson, and visiting Port Underwood.

Meanwhile, in the far north, the missionaries were opening up both coast and interior. Samuel Marsden turned explorer with uncommon zest. His first visit, 1814–15, took him to the head of Hokianga Harbour, and to the Firth of Thames, and the harbours between it and the Bay of Islands. In 1820, in part on the ships Dromedary and Coromandel and in part overland, Marsden went up the Thames River and on to Tauranga; in the course of his return to the Bay of Islands he visited the Manukau, Waitemata, and Kaipara areas before travelling overland to the Bay. His 600-mile journey between February and October 1820 made known the essential features of the northern peninsula.

After sailing from France, d'Urville left Sydney on the Astrolabe in December 1826 with the explicit intention of completing Cook's chart of the coast. He sighted the West Coast early in January 1827, sailed north round Cape Farewell, and became the first to explore the area Cook had called Blind Bay. He named Separation Point, separating Golden Bay from Tasman Bay, and went ashore on the west side of the latter. Here, from a hill, he suspected an opening into Admiralty Bay, and with magnificent seamanship took his ship through the narrow and dangerous French Pass between D'Urville Island and the mainland. He then went south to Cape Campbell, and north to Palliser Bay and the entrance to Port Nicholson, and then along the east coast of the North Island to Tolaga Bay, East Cape, and Bay of Plenty where he narrowly avoided shipwreck on a reef. Wind and current took him as far north as Whangarei Harbour in late February; he turned south to explore the Hauraki Gulf and Waitemata Harbour, and send an expedition overland to the Manukau, though he was not the first European there. He went further south, turned north along the Coromandel coast, sailed to North Cape, and returned to the Bay of Islands where he spent a week before leaving New Zealand in March. His discoveries were not inconsiderable, and he was a skilled observer, especially of the Maoris, and a careful collector of Maori names. He was also a character of the highest romantic elevation, one whom New Zealand has become glad to remember among her discoverers.

Missionary Journeys

After d'Urville, the epic journeys are undertaken by inland explorers, and the work of charting the coast, substantially completed by the Acheron and the Pandora by 1855, became a mere routine matter. Marsden's great journey in 1820 was the precursor to a long series of missionary journeys which, with Maori guidance, made known a great part of the North Island. Here a few examples must stand for the total achievement. Henry Williams in 1831 went to Rotorua from Maketu in the Bay of Plenty, and the following year to Matamata. In 1839, after establishing Octavius Hadfield at Otaki, Williams returned overland to Tauranga, a 300-mile journey along the west coast to the Rangitikei, up this river, across to the Wanganui River, to the Taupo-Rotorua plateau, from Lake Taupo to Lake Rotorua and the Mokoia Island station, and thence to Tauranga. A. N. Brown and James Hamlin, in 1834, went from the Kaipara Harbour overland to the Waikato River, to Raglan and along the coast to Kawhia. They sighted Tongariro and Ruapehu, went down the Waipa River to Ngaruawahia, thence down the Waikato and up the Maramarua River to the Firth of Thames. William Williams covered much the same region later the same year. A year later John Whitely, a Wesleyan, travelled from Kawhia to the Mokau River. In 1834 W. G. Puckey went north to Spirits Bay. Another Wesleyan, James Buller, was at Lake Taupo at the same time as Henry Williams, on a journey south from Kaipara to Port Nicholson, which took him to the Manukau Harbour, by the coast to Kawhia, by native track to Taupo, and thence by the same route as Williams to Port Nicholson.

The chief missionary expeditions of the 1840s were those of William Colenso on the east coast, and these have a great scientific interest, for Colenso was an indefatigable botanical collector. In 1841 he entered the Urewera country and met, quite without feelings of pleasure, at Lake Waikaremoana, a Catholic missionary, Father Baty, who was travelling from Mahia Peninsula to the lake and back to Hawke's Bay. Colenso continued to Lake Tarawera (but was too weary to note its marvels) and on to the Bay of Islands. After he was posted to the Waitangi station, near present-day Napier, he became responsible for an area which included the region south of Lake Taupo. In 1845 he unsuccessfully attempted to cross the Ruahines, which separated him from these parts. Two years later he succeeded; a journey of great difficulty took him from his station to Taupo, to Lake Rotoaira, to the mountain village of Inland Patea, to the upper Rangitikei River, and across the Ruahines to Waipukurau. In 1846 he had travelled from Wellington to the western entrance of the Manawatu Gorge (which had already been penetrated by New Zealand Company explorers), and pushed through the Seventy Mile Bush between the Manawatu and Ruamahanga Rivers.

After 1840, settlement and the quest for land became a major impulse behind exploration. Wellington settlers needed land; Company agents were prospecting for sites for future settlements. In 1840 E. J. Wakefield crossed from Wanganui to Patea; a party led by R. Park and including the artist Charles Heaphy surveyed the Porirua-Taranaki coastal region; and W. Deans went around Palliser Bay to south Wairarapa. A year later R. Stokes was sent by Mein Smith, the Company surveyor, over the Rimutakas to Lake Wairarapa, and heard from the Maoris of the Manawatu Gorge access to the Hawke's Bay region. Charles Kettle and Alfred Wills, in 1842, went through this gorge, and returned to the Hutt along the eastern slopes of the Tararuas. In the following year sheepmen were taking flocks into the Wairarapa; in 1844 a party travelled from Lake Wairarapa to the east coast, and thence along the coastal whaling stations to Table Cape.

Such whaling stations are a reminder that men other than missionaries and survey parties must be reckoned among the explorers. Missionaries frequently met traders on their journeys; P. Tapsell, for instance, certainly preceded Henry Williams to Maketu, and J. S. Polack, who untypically published an account of his activities, spent the early 1830s around Hokianga and Kaipara. In the South Island, traders and bay whalers knew the Canterbury plains, the Taieri plains and river, and the Clutha River. Nor must the scientists be excluded from this early phase. Dr E. Dieffenbach's exploration of North Auckland and the Taupo-Rotorua district in 1841 opened no new country, but was scientifically significant. By about 1850, thanks to these and other journeys, and to the fact that the Maoris could indicate routes and provide guides, the chief features of the North Island interior were well known. Men could move there, if not with ease, at least with confidence.

South Island Exploration

The South Island, larger, more mountainous, and very thinly settled by Maoris, presented problems which took longer to solve. In the 1840s, while Company agents were pressing north from Wellington, others were searching for farm land for the luckless Nelson settlers or else looking at the east coast for fresh sites. Frederick Tuckett, in 1841, revealed the Waimea Plain; the next year S. J. Cotterill reported good land to the east, around the Wairau, Awatere, and Clarence Rivers. The Wairau Affray of 1843 diverted attention briefly to the west, where it was rumoured a great fertile plain existed. Efforts to penetrate to the south-west of Nelson culminated in the great journeys of Thomas Brunner, especially that of 1846–48, one of the most arduous explorations in the whole story. Taking in all some 560 days, Brunner went down the Buller River to the sea, past the Wanganui River, Okarito and the Waiho River, as far south as Tititira Point. He then came back up the coast to the Grey River, noting the presence of coal, and returned to Motueka via the Inangahua and Buller Rivers. On a previous journey he had learned from the local Maoris that they had access to Canterbury across the mountains.

Similar information was gathered from Canterbury Maoris in 1844 by Edward Shortland during a coastal trip from Otago to the Deans' (q.v.) station at Riccarton, near the future site of Christchurch. In the early 1840s Shortland and Tuckett explored around the Waikouaiti, Taieri, Otago Harbour and Clutha River regions; Tuckett in 1844 reported in favour of a settlement at Otago. Charles Kettle was perhaps the first European to see Central Otago; while further north W. Heaphy was the first to journey up the Canterbury coast north of Kaiapoi, reaching in 1845 the Waiau River. W. B. D. Mantell, while engaged upon land purchase for the Government in 1848, travelled from Kaiapoi to Dunedin, much further inland than any of his forerunners. In 1849 and 1850, W. J. W. Hamilton, a surveyor sent by the New Zealand Company to join the Admiralty survey vessel, Acheron, opened up a good deal of the interior. He found good grazing land between Kaiapoi and the Waiau River, and, in a whale boat, charted much of the coast from Cook Strait to Banks Peninsula. In 1850, while the Acheron was in the Foveaux Strait region, he went up the Oreti and Aparima Rivers, and overland from the Bluff to Dunedin.

In the 1850s the most significant pressure is applied by sheep; graziers sought routes and grassland between Nelson and Canterbury, from the Canterbury coast to the mountains, and in the Otago interior. In the 1860s this continuous impulse is complemented by the more hectic appetite for gold; graziers and prospectors opened up all but the most remote parts of the South Island, leaving little but the glaciers and the high peaks for the more disinterested explorer.

After the foundation of Canterbury, Nelson sheepowners were keen to find a stock route south so that they could sell sheep to the new runholders. In 1850 Frederick Weld and C. Wilkinson went up the Awatere River and across the Barefell Pass to the Acheron River, a tributary of the Clarence. Thinking they had found a route to North Canterbury, they sent 700 sheep that way the next year, but they had to be abandoned. In 1850 W. M. Mitchell and E. Dashwood had, using the Waihopai, Awatere, Acheron and Clarence Rivers, and crossing the range to North Canterbury, found a way, which was not, however, a suitable stock route. E. J. Lee and Edward Jollie were the first to find such a route. In 1852 they took 1,800 sheep up to Awatere, and Jollie detected a pass through to the Hanmer plains. Subsequently many parties took sheep and cattle along this lengthy, difficult, but usable route – from Tophouse down the Wairau, up the Awatere, over Barefell Pass, and through Jollies Pass to North Canterbury. Weld, in 1855, shortened the route by opening the Tarndale route between Tophouse and the Acheron.

The Search for Land

As pastoralism spread in Canterbury, would-be runholders became explorers as they searched for ungranted land. Thus in 1851 M. P. Stoddart explored the upper Rakaia and Lake Coleridge region, and in 1855–56 J. B. A. Acland and C. G. Tripp went well up both the Rangitata and Ashburton Rivers. The author Samuel Butler was notable in this phase of exploration; in 1860 he explored the headwaters of all the great Canterbury rivers, saw the pass later known as Arthur's Pass but did not cross it, and, in company with the surveyor-speculator J. H. Baker, crossed the main divide via the Whitcombe Pass before J. H. Whitcombe. They were forced back while following a stream which flowed west. By this time, however, the mountains had been crossed by people other than Maoris, who, in fact, passed their information to the first European explorers. E. Dobson, in 1857, followed the Maori route up the Hurunui and over Harper Pass to the upper Taramakau River. Later the same year, L. Harper and S. Locke followed this route to the mouth of the river.

The search for grazing land also took men south. In 1861 Baker, with E. Owen, explored the region around Lakes Tekapo, Ohau, and Wanaka, and reached the top of Haast Pass. Julius von Haast was engaged to make a geological survey of the Canterbury province; urgency was soon given to his task by the hope of finding gold, prompted by the 1861 rushes in Otago. In 1862 he and A. D. Dobson went into the upper Waitaki River and past the lakes (Tekapo and Pukaki) to the peaks and glaciers beyond them. He named Mount Tasman, and also the Hooker and Mueller Glaciers, and saw the Murchison Glacier from the Mount Cook range, and attempted to cross the Sealy Pass to the West Coast. He also explored the Dobson and Hopkins Rivers from Lake Ohau. In the same year from the Wanaka-Hawea region, he crossed the Haast Pass to the West Coast. He found no gold, but caused some stir in European scientific circles by the evidence he found of extensive early glaciation.

The sheepmen were also important in opening Central Otago. Penetration to the lake country from the south began by C. J. Nairn and C. J. Pharazyn in 1852 who journeyed, with a Maori guide, from Invercargill via the Aparima and Waiau Rivers to Lake Te Anau. In the following year a runholder, Nathaniel Chalmers, similarly guided, went up the Mataura River to near present-day Cromwell and then by the Clutha to Wanaka and Hawea. Instead of pressing on to Canterbury via the Lindis Pass, as had been his intention, he returned down the Clutha River.

In the mid-1850s the Otago Provincial Government began to encourage pastoralists, and the pressure increased. The chief surveyor, J. T. Thomson, first attended to Southland, and then turned to Central Otago. In 1857, by way of the Shag Valley, the Maniototo Plain, the Ida Valley and the Waitaki River, he reached Omarama, and went from there to the peaks north of Hawea and Wanaka, naming one of the country's best-known peaks, Mt. Aspiring. Then he passed to Lake Ohau and the west side of Lake Pukaki. The sheepmen took up this country quickly; some had been there at the same time as Thomson. Their reach extended to the southern lakes by the end of the 1850s. D. Hay, an Australian, rowed a raft around Wakatipu in 1859 and explored the shores, learning of the existence of its northern arm. In the same year a large party including W. G. Rees reached Wanaka from Oamaru, followed the Cardrona River and the Crown Range south, and reached Queenstown via the Shotover and Kawarau Rivers. They went past the head of the lake to the Dart and Rees Rivers. D. McKellar and G. Gunn, two years later, explored the country between Lakes Wakatipu and Te Anau. The exploration conducted by the sheepmen was hardly systematic or accurate; they were more concerned with grazing land than with map-making. Between 1861 and 1864 James McKerrow followed them with an accurate survey.

Runholders' curiosity failed when they passed, as they inevitably did in pressing west, out of potential sheep country. But no country was unpromising to the gold seeker. After Gabriel Read's find in 1861, a series of rushes took men across Otago and into the mountains beyond. As well as gold, men looked for a west coast port with access to the interior, for quick communication with Australia. The north head of Wakatipu promised the best fulfilment for this chimerical hope. Charles Cameron in 1862 found a way across by the north branch of the Routeburn, and in 1863 P. Q. Caples went over Harris saddle to the Hollyford River. Later he followed the Hollyford to Martins Bay. In the same year James Hector went up the west branch of the Matukituki and over Hector Col to the Arawata and the coast near Jackson Bay. while Haast, following a Maori account, crossed the Haast Pass and followed the Haast River to the coast.

Meanwhile, during this period, boat parties were exploring south-western sounds and creeks for access to the interior. The Aquila party led by Captain Alabaster went from Milford to Martins Bay and the Hollyford River, discovering Lakes McKerrow and Alabaster. From Lake Howden, the party saw the rivers flowing east. A. Williamson with the Nugent, also in 1863, went up the Arawata from Jackson Bay and prospected without success around Haast and Cascade Rivers. Hector, using the Matilda Hayes, explored the Martins Bay – Hollyford – Lake Howden – Greenstone route, unaware of previous trips. There was enthusiasm in Queenstown, but the route west and the port remained unestablished. Nor was gold in workable quantities discovered in this wild region; the diggers who penetrated it had to rest content with extending the boundaries of knowledge.

The West Coast and its connections with Canterbury were almost all that remained. In these areas, explorers had to build upon the foundations laid by Brunner in the 1840s and Harper in the 1850s (as well as by some anonymous shipwrecked Americans who, with Maori help, walked from Jackson Bay to Nelson in 1857). In 1860 James Mackay opened up a direct Nelson-Greymouth route, using the Buller, Maruia, and Grey Rivers. A year later, J. Rochfort, following the course of the Grey, Ahaura, and Waiheke Rivers, crossed the divide to Doubtful River, a tributary of the Waiau. In 1862 there was a bridle path along this track; a year later it was used by sheep.

Gold in the mid-1860s stimulated Canterbury interest; in particular a serviceable route across the island was needed. This was discovered by Arthur Dobson in 1864, when he went up the Waimakariri and Bealey Rivers to cross the divide by Arthur's Pass, a route known to the Maoris but no longer used by them. The next year the West Coast gold rush set in; men poured over Harper Pass, and a bridle path and then a coach road were established over Arthur's Pass. The gold fever moved south, and prospectors with it into the remoter parts of South Westland, as far as northwestern Otago.

The Last Phase

By the mid-1860s, because of the quest for sheep country, for gold, and for scientific knowledge, the South Island was in the main known. There were tasks left for scientists and mountaineers, especially in the Southern Alps and among the lakes and sounds of the south-west, but the main work was done. Nevertheless, this last phase of exploration, occupying the later nineteenth century, is distinguished by the activity of a man who was at once a great explorer and a notable character, C. E. Douglas – a man equally to be celebrated for his fortitude and for the vitality (both verbal and visual) of his reports and diaries. The area he explored, the peaks, glaciers, and rivers of South Westland offered nothing to the settler, the pastoralist, or the prospector; only the tourist industry could turn it to economic advantage. Accordingly a good deal of Douglas's activity as official explorer and surveyor was directed to the discovery of usable tourist routes.

In 1855, Douglas and Gerhard Mueller explored the Arawata River and its glacial sources and climbed Mount Ionia. Douglas also went up the Okuru River, finding passes to Otago, but none likely to prove useful. Two years later Mueller explored the Landsborough tributary of the Haast River, and Douglas the sources of the Twain River and the Douglas Glacier, all in the vicinity of Mt. Sefton. In 1891 Douglas went up the Waiatoto River and climbed Mt. Ragan. A year later he was sent to find a route between the West Coast and the Mount Cook Hermitage, for tourist purposes, and this task occupied him for the next few years; in 1893, with A. P. Harper, he explored the Franz Josef Glacier and later the Balfour Glacier. Later, Harper went up the Karangarua River from the coast to the Landsborough River and to the Haast. Two overseas visitors, E. A. FitzGerald and Mattias Zurbriggen, climbed Mt. Sefton from the Hermitage and crossed the main divide to the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, accompanied in the later stages by Harper. The organised exploration of the region ended without the discovery of a commercial tourist route from the coast to the interior.

Further south during the later part of the century attention was directed to opening the country between the southern lakes, Manapouri, Te Anau, and Wakatipu, and the sounds, especially Milford. The tourist motive was again important, though some still sought land for sheep and others mineral resources. The most significant discovery, for in the fullness of time it led to a regular route between the lakes and the sounds, was that of W. H. Homer in 1888 of a saddle between the upper Hollyford and the Cleddau River leading into Milford Sound. He became a strenuous advocate of a tunnel under the saddle, and some 50 years later the Homer Tunnel was completed. In the same year Quintin McKinnon and E. Mitchell, by way of the Clinton River at the north tip of Lake Te Anau, had crossed the Mackinnon Pass into Milford Sound and returned by the same route. A track was subsequently cut and the walk across became a celebrated, if strenuous, tourist attraction.

There were still peaks and isolated pockets of remote country left for the explorer by the end of the century; some even remain to the present. But the century of discovery and exploration inaugurated by Cook, and the continuing of exploration in the remoter south, had made the country known. First the coastline of both islands, then the interior of the north, and finally the interior of the south, had been revealed by discoverer, missionary, sealer, whaler, trader, surveyor, scientist, pastoralist, prospector, and mountaineer. Generally speaking, the frontier had been pushed back most rapidly and thoroughly when the impulse had sprung from more than mere curiosity. The missionary seeking souls to save, the Company agent looking for farming land, the trader and whaler keen on their profits, the pastoralist on the lookout for an extensive run, the prospector alert for the gleam of gold in his dish, and (more recently) the mountaineer challenged by a peak or a traverse – these have been the main agents of exploration. Where they led, the scientist and the systematic surveyor most typically followed – though this generalisation must be qualified by the names of Dieffenbach, Hector, Haast, Hamilton, Mueller, and Douglas.

The greatest men were those who could unite a vital and intelligent curiosity with their more immediate purposes; Colenso, not the less zealous as a missionary because he was also a diligent collector of botanical specimens and moa bones; Brunner, with an eye for a coal deposit as well as endurance and courage; Haast, sent out by his employers to find gold but also noting evidence of glaciation; Douglas, instructed to find a tourist route and making the whole nature of a region come alive in his reports and sketches. Their great forerunner, Cook, will fit the same pattern; in the main concerned with geographical knowledge, his mind was not the less receptive to human and social facts, nor yet to the possible uses of timber and flax.

It should finally be noted that, had the Maori been equipped with a written language and the ability to make maps, the story of discovery and exploration would need to be written differently. There can have been little that they did not know about the North Island; its rivers, bush tracks, and coasts were to them highways, used for war, commerce, and sociability. A good deal of the coastal areas of the South Island were known to them too, and routes across the mountains between the coasts. Their knowledge, and frequently their services as guides and porters, were the essential underpinning to the exploits of Pakeha explorers.

by William Hosking Oliver, M.A.(N.Z.), D.PHIL.(OXON.), Professor of History, Massey University of Manawatu.

• William Colenso, Bagnall, A. G., and Petersen, G. C. (1948)
• The Discovery of New Zealand, Beaglehole, J. C. (1961)
• The Exploration of the Pacific, Beaglehole, J. C. (1947)
• The Exploration of New Zealand, McClymont, W. G. (1959)
• Early Travellers in New Zealand, Taylor, N. M. (ed.), (1959).