The natives have been for fifty years or more in a continual state of excitement on one subject or another: this has had a markedly bad effect on their character and physical condition, as I shall by-and-by take occasion to point out. When the first straggling ships came here, the smallest bit of iron was a prize so inestimable that I might be thought to exaggerate were I to tell the bare truth on the subject. The excitement and speculation caused by a ship being seen off the coast were immense. Where would she anchor? What _iron_ could be got from her? Would it be possible to seize her? The oracle was consulted, preparations were made to follow her along the coast, even through an enemy's country, at all risks; and when she disappeared she was not forgotten, but would continue long to be the subject of anxious expectation and speculation.
After this, regular trading began. The great madness then was for muskets and gunpowder. A furious competition was kept up. Should any tribe fail to procure a stock of these articles as soon as its neighbours, extermination was its probable doom. We may then imagine the excitement, the over-labour, the hardship, the starvation (occasioned by crops neglected whilst labouring to produce flax or other commodity demanded in payment)--I say imagine, but I have seen at least part of it.
After the demand for arms was supplied, came a perfect furor for iron tools, instruments of husbandry, clothing, and all kinds of pakeha manufactures. These things having been quite beyond their means while they were supplying themselves with arms, they were in the most extreme want of them; particularly iron tools. A few years ago the madness ran upon horses and cattle; now, young New Zealand believes in nothing but money, and they are continually tormenting themselves with plans to acquire it in large sums at once, without the trouble of slow and saving industry; which, as applied to the accumulation of money, they neither approve of nor understand: nor will they ever, as a people, take this mode till convinced that money, like everything else of value, can only be procured as a rule by giving full value for it, either in labour or the produce of labour.