De Surville, a Frenchman, who called at Doubtless Bay very shortly after Cook left it, destroyed a village, and carried off a chief.

Marion de Fresne was, in 1772, in the Bay of Islands, killed by the natives, with sixteen of his people, and eaten, for violation of some of their customs, and illtreatment of some individuals.
Other outrages followed, committed on both sides, and it is no wonder that, though Cook represented the advantages of the island for colonization, it was not considered a desirable place in which to settle.
The cannibalism of the Maoris especially made people shy of the country.
Intermittent communication took place between New Zealand and the new Colony of New South Wales, and at last, in 1814, Samuel Marsden, a clergyman of the Church of England, who had seen Maoris in New South Wales, landed in the Bay of Islands with other missionaries.

This fearless and noble-minded man obtained the confidence of the Maoris, and a commencement of colonization was made.
It was not, however, until 1840 that the New Zealand Company was formed to definitely colonize.

They made their station at Wellington.
In the same year Captain Hobson, R.N., was sent as Lieutenant-Governor.
Landing first at the Bay of Islands, he transferred his headquarters to the Hauraki Gulf in September 1840, where he founded Auckland, which remained the capital until 1876, when the seat of Government was transferred to Wellington.
The North Island, in which all these occurrences took place, contained by far the greater number of the natives, and it seems strange now that the first efforts to settle were not made in the Middle Island, which has proved equally suitable for Europeans, and where the difficulties of settlement, from the existence of a less numerous native population, were not so great.

It is not necessary here to follow the complicated history of New Zealand in later years, which unfortunately comprises several bloody wars with the Maoris.
The present prosperous condition of this great colony is well known, but it has not been effected without the rapid diminution of the natives, who have met with the fate of most aborigines in contact with Europeans, especially when the former were naturally bold and warlike.
The Maoris have retained the tradition of the original arrival of their race in a fleet of canoes from a country called Hawaiki, which is by some supposed to be Hawaii in the Sandwich Group.