WILD PIGS. 19 



Charlotte Sound in June, 1773, on his famous second voyage, 

 " Captain Furneaux put on shore, in Cannibal Cove, a boar and 

 two breeding-sows, so that we have reason to hope this country will, 

 in time, be stocked with these animals, if they are not destroyed 

 !>y the Natives before they become wild, for afterwards they will 

 be in no danger." 



Forster, in his journal, says, " They were turned into the woods 

 to range at their own pleasure." In the following year (October, 

 1774) he says, "We took the opportunity to visit the innermost 

 recesses of West Bay, in order to be convinced, if possible, whether 

 there was any probability that the hogs brought thither about a 

 year before would ever stock those wild woods with numerous breeds. 

 We came to the spot where we had left them, but saw not the least 

 vestiges of their having been on the beach, nor did it appear that 

 any of the Natives had visited this remote place, from whence we 

 had reason to hope that the animals had retreated into the thickest 

 part of the woods." Most probably this is what happened, and 

 these first pigs were probably the progenitors of many thousands. 



On the 2nd November of the year 1773 Captain Cook gave 

 a few pigs to some Natives who came off in their canoes near Cape 

 Kidnappers. Thus pigs were first introduced into both the South 

 and North Islands of New Zealand. I do not think there is much 

 doubt that the wild pigs of the South Island " Captain-Cookers," 

 as they came to be called were the progeny of those originally 

 set free at Cannibal Cove, though Cook himself recorded in 1777, 

 " I could get no intelligence about the fate of those I had left in 

 West Bay and in Cannibal Cove, when I was here in the course 

 of my last voyage." There is an earlier record of the introduction 

 of pigs into the North Island, for in 1769 De Surville presented 

 the chief of the Natives at Doubtless Bay with two little pigs, but 

 there is no record as to what came of them. 



The next introduction was apparently on the occasion of the 

 visit of Captain King, Governor of New South Wales, to the Bay 

 of Islands in 1793, when he gave the Natives two boars and ten 

 young sows. Dieffenbach, who was in New Zealand in 1839, but 

 who is not a reliable authority on any matters relating to Maori 

 stories or traditions, gives a different version of this gift. He 

 says, "Captain King, at the end of last century, landed at the 

 north end of the island, and gave the Natives three pigs, which. 



