iends with the
sailors, conveying shooting parties about the country, supplying
the ships with fish, and showing themselves expert traders, keenly
appreciative of the value of the smallest scrap of iron, to say
nothing of tools. Through all their friendly intercourse, however,
it was ominous that they breathed no word of Cook or De Surville.
Moreover, a day came on which one of them stole Marion's sword. Crozet
goes out of his way to describe how the kindly captain refused to put
the thief in irons, though the man's own chief asked that it should be
done. But it leaks out--from the statement of another officer--that
the thief was put in irons. We may believe that he was flogged also.

[Illustration: STERN OF CANOE]

Crozet marked the physical strength of the Maori, and was particularly
struck with the lightness of the complexions of some, and the European
cast of their features. One young man and a young girl were as white
as the French themselves. Others were nearly black, with frizzled
hair, and showed, he thought, Papuan blood. To the Frenchman's eye the
women seemed coarse and clumsy beside the men. He was acute enough to
notice that the whole population seemed to be found by the sea-shore;
though he often looked from high hill-tops he saw no villages in the
interior. Children seemed few in number, the cultivations small, and
the whole race plainly lived in an incessant state of war. He admired
the skilful construction of the stockades, the cleanliness of the
_pas_, the orderly magazines of food and fishing gear, and the
armouries where the weapons of stone and wood were ranged in precise
order. He praises the canoes and carving--save the hideous attempts
at copying the human form. In short he gives one of the most valuable
pictures of Maori life in its entirely primitive stage.

A camp on shore was established for the invalids and another for the
party engaged in cutting down the tall kauri pines for masts. Crozet
calls the kauri trees cedars, and is full of praises of their size and
quality. He was the officer in charge of the woodcutters. On the 13th
June he saw marching towards his camp a detachment from the ship fully
armed and with the sun flashing on their fixed bayonets. At once it
occurred to him that something must be amiss--otherwise why fixed
bayonets? Going forward, Crozet bade the detachment halt, and quietly
asked what was the matter. The news was indeed grave. On the day
before M. Marion with a pa