“...The New Zealanders are decidedly a maritime people. They are fond of the sea, and make excellent sailors, and they only require virtuous and industrious Europeans to reside among them to render their services in this way most advantageous to themselves and to the British empire.*

* I was much gratified at hearing the New Zealand coxswain of an English boat; in which two of my fellow-passengers per the Roslyn Castle and myself were rowed across the Bay of Islands on a beautiful moonlight night, by four of his countrymen, calling out to them in good English, and scarcely with a foreign accent, "Pull away, my lads," “Stand to it, my boys." The New Zealanders, in reply, struck up their native boat-song in a sort of recitative, of which the chorus, like that of the Canadian boat song, is “Tohi, Tohi,” or Row, brothers, row.”
[New Zealand in 1839, Lang, 1839]
John Dunmore Lang (1799–1878)