Besides flax, it was found that New Zealand produced most excellent timber—­the kauri pine.  The first visitors saw sea-going canoes beautifully carved by rude tools of stone, which had been hollowed out, each from a single tree, and so large that they were manned by one hundred warriors.  The gum trees of New Holland are extremely hard, and their wood is so heavy that it sinks in water like iron.  But the kauri, with a leaf like that of the gum tree, is the toughest of pines, though soft and easily worked—­suitable for shipbuilding, and for masts and spars.  In 1830 twenty-eight vessels made fifty-six voyages from Sydney to New Zealand, chiefly for flax; but they also left parties of men to prosecute the whale and seal fisheries, and to cut kauri pine logs.  Two vessels were built by English mechanics, one of 140 tons, and the other of 370 tons burden, and the natives began to assist the new-comers in all their labours.

At this time most of the villages had at least one European resident called a Pakeha Maori, under the protection of a chief of rank and influence, and married to a relative of his, either legally or by native custom.  It was through the resident that all the trading of the tribe was carried on.  He bought and paid for the flax, and employed men to cut the pine logs and float them down the rivers to the ships.

Every whaling and trading vessel that returned to Sydney or Van Diemen’s Land brought back accounts of the wonderful prospects which the islands afforded to men of enterprise, and New Zealand became the favourite refuge for criminals, runaway prisoners, and other lovers of freedom.  When, therefore the crew of the schooner ‘Industry’ threw Captain Blogg overboard, it was a great comfort to them to know that they were going to an island in which there was no Government.

Captain Blogg had arrived from England with a bad character.  He had been tried for murder.  He had been ordered to pay five hundred pounds as damages to his mate, whom he had imprisoned at sea in a hencoop, and left to pick up his food with the fowls.  He had been out-lawed, and forbidden to sail as officer in any British ship.  These were facts made known to, and discussed by, all the whalers who entered the Tamar, when the whaling season was over in the year 1835.  And yet the notorious Blogg found no difficulty in buying the schooner ‘Industry’, taking in a cargo, and obtaining a clearance for Hokianga, in New Zealand.  He had shipped a crew consisting of a mate, four seamen, and a cook.

Black Ned Tomlins, Jim Parrish, and a few other friends interviewed the crew when the ‘Industry’ was getting ready for sea.  Black Ned was a half-breed native of Kangaroo Island, and was looked upon as the best whaler in the colonies, and the smartest man ever seen in a boat.  He was the principal speaker.  He put the case to the crew in a friendly way, and asked them if they did not feel themselves to be a set of fools, to think of going to sea with a murdering villain like Blogg?