HE anchored in Golden Bay;* but luck was against him. First of all the natives of the bay paddled out to view his ships, and, falling on a boat’s crew, clubbed four out of seven of the men. He says that he took no vengeance, but sailed away further into the strait. Next morning a strong gale had sprung up. Tasman, therefore, turned and ran on northward, merely catching glimpses, through scud and cloud, of the North Island.*
Finally, at what is now North Cape,* he discerned to his joy a free passage to the east. He made one attempt to land, in search of water, on a little group of islands hard by, which, as it was Christmastide, he called Three Kings.* But a throng of natives, shaking spears and shouting with hoarse voices, terrified his boat’s crew. He gave up the attempt and sailed away, glad, no doubt, to leave this vague realm of storm and savages.*
abridged
A large, curved natural harbour on the northwest tip of South Island.
The Cook Strait between North and South Islands turns and narrows suddenly at the eastern end, where North Island’s Wellington looks across to South Island’s Blenheim. Tasman had no way of knowing that where the Strait dog-legs at this point there lay a passage through to the east, so he let the ill-timed gale drive him back the way he had come.
North Cape is the northernmost tip of North island, a few miles to the east of Cape Reinga (Te Rerenga Wairua).
Manawatawhi, a group of 13 uninhabited islands about 34 miles northwest of Cape Reinga, New Zealand. Tasman named the islands on January 6th, 1643, the Feast of the Epiphany.
This ironic turn of phrase may give a misleading impression. The author of this account, William Pember Reeves (1857-1932), was a keen social reformer who headed the committee organising the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, an early initiative to combat racism.