Published by Century Hutchinson New Zealand Ltd., 1988.
Very good 2nd-hand condition, with slight fading on the spine of the dust-cover.
After a long and perilous voyage across the Pacific, Ploynesian navigators finally set foot on huge new islands, with giant trees and strange plants and birds. The arduous task of uncovering and exploiting the new land's natrual riches, establishing food supplies, shelter and trading routes began - and within a thousand years, the explorers who became the Maori people had evolved a culture which impressed the Europeans who first saw it.

Tasman, who in 1642 came in seardh of a vast and productive southern continent, did not even land in the country which he named. It was the Englishman James Cook, over a century later who laid the foundations for the first extensive European exploration of New Zealand by charting the coastline in detail, while the scientists who accompanied him studied and recorded the exotic flora and fauna.

The second wave of explorers also faced extreme hardships in order to open up the often rugged country. If they survived the hazards of thelong sea voyage from Europe, which included scurvy, starvation and shipwreck, they then set out on journeys through difficult terrain, where the food was unfamiliar and often hard to find, and where there was often suspicion and hostility from the first inhabitants.

This authoritive account discusses the likely nature if the 'Fleet' traditionally held to have brought the first Polynesians - and with a wealth of personal anecdote drawn form letters and journals it provides a facinating insight into the wide assortment of missionaries, scientists, surveyors, mountaineers, farmers and others who moved through dense bush, across rivers and mountain ranges, both with and without Maori guidance, in the interests of commerce, communication, religion, science and sheer adventure.

The text is supported by a series of features which highlight the practical details of survival in the alien land, and the demands which it placed upon human endurance and ingenuity. Topics covered include the Polynesian languages, the moa, greenstone, ships' logs, Maori pa, Russian explorers, scurvy and 'spruce beer', birds as food, the Treaty of Waitangi, and the notorious sheep-theif Mackenzie.

This book will become essential reading for anyone interested in New Zealand history, and in the history of exploration and colonisation in the Pacific.

- from the inside cover.