99 o AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



eighty days after his seizure ; while De Surville, eleven days only after the death of 

 Ngakinui, was drowned in the surf at Callao. 



In May, 1/92, Marion du Fresne anchored his two ships, the Margin's de Castries 

 and the Mascarin, at the Bay of Islands. Lieutenant Crozet, in command of the King's 

 sloop Mascarin, had lost his masts, and the two ships put into the Bay of Islands to 

 refit. Du Fresne was frequently on shore during his stay, and habits of intimacy begat 

 confidence in the mind of the French commander in the friendship of the natives. Both 

 races lived in harmony for several weeks. " They treated us," Crozet said, " with every 

 show of friendship for thirty-three days, with the intention of eating us on the thirty- 

 fourth." On the 1 2th of June, an attack was made on the French, when twenty-eight 

 of the party and the commander were killed and eaten. A boat's crew had desecrated 

 the sacred places of the tribe, and the payment for the sacrilege was the lives of the 

 strangers. Crozet, who had a party of men engaged getting spars on the Kawakawa 

 River, was also in danger of being entrapped by the treacherous savages ; but being 

 forewarned, he was enabled to punish those who had killed his companions and sought 

 his own destruction. Here he refitted the ships, and after a stay of sixty-four days 

 in the Bay of Islands, prosecuted his voyage. 



INTERCOURSE WITH SYDNEY. 



In 1787 the colony of New South Wales was proclaimed. It included in the wide 

 expanse of its territorial limits not only New Zealand but all the islands in the Pacific 

 Ocean within the latitudes of Cape York and the southern portion of Van Diemen's 

 Land, as far east as the hundred and thirty-fifth degree of longitude. In 1792 inter- 

 course with New South Wales was established, and the first Europeans became located 

 in New Zealand. Mr. Raven of the Britannia, placed a sealing gang under the 

 command of Mr. Leith, the second mate of the ship, at Dusky Bay. It was not until 

 more than a year had elapsed that Mr. Raven went to look for Leith and his 

 companions. He found that they had collected some four thousand five hundred skins, 

 but had been " principally occupied in constructing a vessel to serve them in the event 

 of any accident happening to the Britannia." The vessel was, although nearly completed, 

 left behind by the Britannia. The sealers reported that they had received no molesta- 

 tion from the natives, who were apparently as sparse as when Cook visited them, and 

 that the part of the Islands where they had resided for over a year offered but few 

 advantages for commerce or settlement. 



In September, 1795, Mr. Bampton, of the ship Endeavour, in company with the 

 Fancy, left Sydney Cove for India, but on reaching Dusky Bay found his vessel so 

 leaky that she was run on shore and scuttled. The vessel that had been built there 

 by the sealers now came into request, and being found in the same state as she had 

 been left by Mr. Leith, was completed .and launched by Mr. Bampton. Collins tells us 

 " that in addition to the large number of persons which Mr. Bampton had permission 

 to ship in Sydney, nearly as many more found means to secrete themselves on board 

 his ship and the Fancy." For these, as well as his officers and ship's company, Mr. 

 Bampton had now to provide a passage from New Zealand. He accordingly, after fitting 

 as a schooner the vessel he had launched, and naming her the Providence, sailed with 



