412 Transactions. 



Art. LI. — Captain Dumont D'UrviUe's Visit to Whangarei, Waitemata, 



and the Thames in 1827. 



Translated from the French* by S. Percy Smith, F.R.G.S. 



[Read before the Auckland InsHiute, •22nd November. 1909.] 



We left the " Astrolabe " oft" Tokomaru Bay, noi'th of Gisborne, after 

 having visited Tologa Bay (see Transactions, vol. xli, p. 130), and will now 

 cake up her further voyage to the north, and describe the visit of the 

 French expedition to the Waitemata, the present site of Auckland, in 1827. 



After leaving Tokomaru there are no incidents of particular interest 

 until the corvette reached the Great Barrier Island, though she sighted 

 AVhite Island and many of the other groups of islands in the Bay of Plenty, 

 and nearly suft'ered shipwreck on the Mercury Islands during a violent storm. 



As in the previous cases, the translator's notes appear within square 

 brackets [ ]. 



D'Urville's intercourse with the Ngatai-Paoa Tribe of Maoris at the 

 Tamaki is of peculiar interest ; and, moreover, his meeting with Rangi- 

 tuke's expedition at Whangarei has served to fix the exact date of an 

 important event in the history of the Auckland isthmus, the full history of 

 Avhich is to be found in " The Peopling of the North " and the " Wars of the 

 Xorthern against the Southern Tribes in the Nineteenth Century," pub- 

 lished by the Polynesian Society. 



With regard to D'Urville's claim to have been the discoverer of the 

 Manukau Harbour, we must, in fairness, deprive the celebrated Frenchman 

 of that honour, for it was Marsden (with whom was the Rev. Mr. Butler) 

 who first visited those waters, as the following extract from his MS. journal, 

 now in the possession of Dr. Hocken, who has very kindly sent me a copy, 

 will prove : " November 3rd, 1820. . . . when I went to the top of a 

 very high conical hill [Mount Wellington, or Maunga-rei], near the settle- 

 ment [Mauinaina, across the Avater from Panmure]. From its summit may 

 be seen both the western and the eastern shores of New Zealand. One river 

 [the Manukau] which ran into the western ocean seemed to join the Wyete- 

 matta [Waitemata] and the Magoea [Mokoia ; really Tamaki. Mokoia being 

 the basin south of Panmure] Rivers, as I could not see any land that 

 separated them [Otahuhu isthmus would be invisible from Mount Wel- 

 lington]. On inquiry, I learnt that one river [Wai-uku] which I saw ran 

 towards Wyekotta [Waikato], and the other was called Manukou [Manukau], 

 which fell into the sea on the Avest side." ^ . . . On the 9th November, 

 ■■ wishing to ascertain whether the River Manukou did unite with the Magoea 

 River or the Wyetematta, I determined to proceed immediately to Manukou 

 to satisfy myself on that head. . . . We reached Manukou in the 

 evening. . . . We found an extensive harbour, and saw the Heads 

 at the distance of about 5 leagues. ... I informed him that the object 

 of my visit was to examine the Harbour of Manukou, and that we intended 



* Voyage de la corvette L' Astrolabe, execute par ordre du Roi, 2:)endant les annees 

 1826, 1827, 1828, sous le commandement de M. J. Dumont D'Urvdlle (Paris, 1833), 

 vol. ii, }>. Ill et seq. 



