Smith.— Captain Dumont D'Urville's Visit in 1827. 413 



to go down to the Heads to see if there was an entrance for ships." . . . 

 10th November : " Though the communication between the western and 

 eastern seas is not entirely complete, yet it is very nearly so. . . . In 

 the Manukou there are very extensive shoals and sand-banks, but there 

 appeared to be a channel of deep water, but which we were unable to 

 examine in the canoe from the strength of the tide, which occasioned too 

 great a sea to venture into it with safetv. The entrance into the harbour 

 is also narrow, and it is probable a bar may be found on the outside, but this 

 we could not ascertain, as it would not be safe to go out to sea in a small 

 canoe when the swell is so great ; within the Heads we had 10 fathoms of 

 water." 



The above clearly proves Marsden to have been the first discoverer of 

 Manukau. Apparently he went down the harbour to beyond Puponga 

 Point, as the soundings and other things prove. Marsden was there six 

 years and a half before the " Astrolabe " entered the Waitemata, a fact 

 which D'Urville could not have been aware of, for the above quotations are 

 not printed in the " Missionary Kegister," and it was from that source that 

 D'Urville obtained the other information as to Marsden's doings which 

 he so freely cjuotes in his third volume. Judging from D'Urville's obser- 

 vations scattered throughout his works, he would be the last man to deprive 

 a prior discoverer of the credit which is his due. 



With respect to the name " Astrolabe Channel," which D'Urville gave 

 to what is now known as the Waiheke Channel, his name must also give 

 place to another which had previously been given to it by Major Cruise, of 

 the 84th Regiment, who, in the colonial schooner " Prince Regent," belonging 

 to the New South Wales Government, under the command of Captain Kent, 

 entered the Rangitoto Channel on the 21st August, 1820, and thence 

 passed along the Waiheke Channel to Coromandel, where H.M. storeship 

 of that name was then taking in spars for the Admiralty. On her return 

 north the schooner again passed through the channel, and left by way of 

 the Motu-ihi Channel on the 3rd September, 1820. Cruise, in his " Journal 

 of a Ten Months' Residence in New Zealand," p. 209, says, " The passage 

 above mentioned was called ' Prince Regent's Channel,' because that vessel 

 was the first by which it was known to have been navigated." Marsden 

 also passed up the Waiheke Channel on his way to Kaipara from Coro- 

 mandel two days before the '' Prince Regent " first entered it, but he does 

 not appear to have given it a name, and therefore Cruise's name, " Prince 

 Regent's Channel," should stand. 



[Visit to Whangarei.] 



Chapter XIV [part of page 142]. 



20th February, 1827. — At daybreak the land which had been in view 

 all night showed up at less than tAvo leagues' distance to windward, and 

 the whole of the island of Otea [Aotea, Great Barrier] was developed to its 

 full extent. It is formed by a chain of elevated mountains, cut up by deep 

 ravines, and is generally sterile. A small island situated on the N.E. of 

 ■Otea [Rakitu], which we passed at about two miles and a half distant, offers 

 a most arid aspect. On the whole coast of Otea we did not remark any 

 indication of inhabitants ; no smoke denoted the presence of human beings. 

 By noon we were at a point precisely to the east and less than half a league 

 from the north point of Otea. On that side the island is terminated by a 

 peninsula, without vegetation, of a brownish colour, and the flanks of which. 



