Excerpt from The Early History of New Zealand: Being a Series of Lectures Delivered Before the Otago Institute; Also a Lecturette on the Maoris of the South Island

Cook spent nearly a month here, visiting many of the de lightful bays and coves which abound in this neighbourhood, and whose scenery at this day gives so much pleasure to the traveller who passes through those magnificent labyrinthic windings traversed by the Union Company's steamer on the passage from Nelson to Picton. Here, too, Cook pays a tribute which has so often since been paid by other travellers to the songsters of the New Zealand forests. He says, In the morning we were awakened by the signing of the birds* the number was incredible, and they seemed to strain their throats in emulation of each other. The wild melody was infinitely superior to anything we had ever heard of the same kind it seemed to be like small bells exquisitely tuned. We found that the birds here always began to sing about two hours after midnight, and continuing their music until sunrise, were, like our nightingales, silent during the rest of the day. The principal contributors to this delightful concert are known to us as the tui or parson bird, and the mocking or bell bird, whose songs, alas, are, as the years go by, more and more faintly heard in our bush. Here Cook gained for the first time indisputable knowledge of the practice of cannibalism, which he characterizes as being a horrid custom of the inhabitants. One of the Indians bit and gnawed a bone which Mr. Banks had taken up, drawing it through his mouth, and showing by signs that it had afforded him a delicious repast. This knowledge, as I shall presently explain, was to be of great use and benefit to those who, more than two ages later, were to colonize the New Zealand shores.

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