Bo 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
Burnsides, who having by industry accumulated 
a fortune of ,£30,000, was on his return to end 
his days among his friends on the banks of the 
Liffey.” 
For those days the Boyd was a large ship, well 
found and well armed, was owned by Mr. George 
Brown, a London merchant, and was under the 
command of Mr. John Thompson. In addition 
to her crew, she carried a large number of pas¬ 
sengers, bound to the Cape of Good Hope, and 
also some convict labourers, who were to be 
employed in cutting and loading the spars. Her 
European complement consisted of some seventy 
persons, and some five or six Maoris, and these 
latter, it was commonly asserted, and is believed 
to the present day, were the instigators of the 
crime, although that designation of the massacre 
is still resented by the Maoris of the present 
day, who insist that the slaughter of the Boyd 
people was but a natural and just retribution for 
the cruel flogging of a chief named Tara by the 
Europeans. 
The first particulars of the event reached 
Sydney through Mr. Alexander Berry, super¬ 
cargo of the ship City of Edinburgh , but his 
testimony, coming entirely from native sources, 
