HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ZEALAND. 



991 



her and the Fancy for Norfolk Island, having on board as many of the officers and 

 people as they could contain, leaving the remainder to proceed in a vessel which one 

 Hatherleigh, formerly a carpenter's mate of H.M.S. Sir ins, undertook to construct out 

 of the Endeavours long-boat. Hatherleigh was, however, unable to bring away all who 

 were left behind by Mr. Bampton, and the fate of those remaining on the shore is 

 unknown. The vessel he constructed at Dusky Bay was named the Assistance, and sold 

 in Sydney for the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds sterling. 



The skins of the seals caught by Mr. Lei.th and his fellows were the first articles 

 of export the produce of any part of the colony of New South Wales, and the first- 



TI1K KKV. SAMUKI. .MARSDEN LANDIMi AT THE BAY OF ISLANDS. 



fruits of the Australian seal-trade which proved so lucrative to the settlement, until 

 the unrestricted slaughter of the animals, between 1800 and 1820, caused their capture 

 to be no longer regarded as a generally lucrative enterprise. The two vessels, the 

 Providence and the Assistance, built in New Zealand, were the earliest essays at ship- 

 building in Australasia. The merchants of Sydney soon learned from visitors to New 

 Zealand that timber from the Hauraki Gulf could be obtained and carried to the Cape 

 of Good Hope and India, and disposed of at a profit; and thus, before New Zealand 

 waters became celebrated for the abundance of whales, amicable relations sprung up 

 between the Maori people and the colonists of New South Wales. Two New Zealanders 

 were brought to Sydney in 1/93, and sent to Norfolk Island to teach the people there 

 the Maori mode of dressing tlax, and Captain King, when accompanying them to their 

 homes later in the year, gave them maize, wheat, peas and a quantity of garden seeds, 

 besides pigs and hardware. 



