Hearuy.—On Port Nicholson and the Natives in 1839. - 88 
rous shore-parties watched throughout the winter months for whales that, 
coming inshore during the breeding season, were entangled or swept by the 
tide into the bays, where they could be attacked with advantage, and when 
killed, towed, with the aid of the flood or ebb tide, alongside the ship or 
under sheers of the shore establishment. At Port Nicholson heads, the 
tide was not so strong as to draw in the “ fish,” as they were termed, and 
as a consequence the place was unfrequented, and remained with its people 
in a more primitive condition than any of the surrounding harbours. 
The forest was more undisturbed. Along the eastern shore, from the 
mouth of the Hutt River to outside of Ward Island, the forest was uninter- 
rupted, and the trees overhung the water, giving shelter to great numbers 
of wild fowl. 
About Kaiwhara, Ngahauranga, and the Korokoro, the earthquakes had 
not then raised the coast, and caused the beach, now octupied by the 
railway, to appear, and there, also, the trees overhung the water, leaving 
only at the ebb of the tide a space sufficient for a pathway. 
The indigenous birds had been entirely unmolested, save when the 
Maori snared them in his furtive and noiseless manner. I remember, 
especially, the enormous number of waterfowl frequenting the shallows at 
the mouth of the Hutt River. Cormorants, ducks, teal, oyster-catchers, 
plovers, sand-pipers, curlew, and red-legged waders, were there in pairs, 
detachments, and masses, and so tame that it was slaughter, rather than 
sport, to shoot them. 
At the beach at the head of Evans Bay, there were, beside ordinary 
waterfowl, flocks of Paradise ducks (Casarca variegata). In the low fern 
and sandy shores of Island and Lyall Bays the indigenous quail, now 
disappeared, would rise almost at one’s foot with its shrill, startling whistle, 
while along the rocks the slate-coloured cranes (Ardea sacra), two and two, 
were to be seen making erratic darts after shrimps, or patiently waiting for 
a passing fish. 
The forest was then teeming with birds. Of twelve or fourteen species 
of small birds that were then to be seen in every wood, only the tui, the 
fly-catcher, and the wren, with the sand-lark, in the open, are now common, 
while the robin, the bell-bird, the titmouse, the thrush, the popokatea, the 
tiraweke, and the riroriro, are rarely seen or have entirely passed away. 
Of the larger birds, the kokako, or erow, the rail, pukeko, pigeon, kaka, 
and huia, were numerous in their respective localities or feeding-grounds. 
Of a night might be heard the booming, or ** drum," of the bittern ( Botau- 
rus peciloptilus). The weka ( Ocydromus earli), now common about the Hutt 
Valley, was then so scarce, that for more than three months our naturalist 
8 
