and drinking enormously, entertained the
crew with songs and dances. Cook deeply regretted this incident, and
candidly confesses that he was not justified in trying to seize the
canoes, but having once committed himself, he was obliged for his own
safety to go to the bitter end. Banks says the day is "the most
disagreeable my life has yet seen; black be the mark for it, and heaven
send that such may never return to embitter future reflection."

The next day a party landed to cut wood, and was accompanied by the three
captives, whom they tried to persuade to join their friends. The
suggestion was declined, as they professed to be afraid of being eaten,
and after a time went and hid in some bushes. Cook, noticing several
parties of armed natives advancing in a threatening manner, retired his
woodcutters across the river. About 150 to 200 Maoris gathered on the
opposite bank. Tupia was put forward to parley, and some presents were
shown, and at length one man came over who received a present from each
of the British and then rejoined his friends. Cook then returned to the
ship, taking with him the three youths, who still seemed afraid of their
own countrymen. They were again landed the next morning as the ship was
about to sail, and though they still professed to be frightened, were
soon seen walking away in friendly converse with some who had come to
meet them.

NATIVE ACCOUNT.

Mr. Polack, a New Zealand resident, gives an account in his New Zealand,
which he gathered from the children of natives who were present at the
landing of Cook. The tribe then living in the neighbourhood were recent
arrivals, their leader being Te Ratu--the first man killed by the
English. The natives were anxious to avenge him, but were afraid of the
"thunderbolts which killed at a long distance," some indeed went so far
as to say they felt ill if an Englishman looked at them. The idea of
revenge was only ended on the vessel leaving. Mr. Polack's chief witness
was the son of a man who was wounded by a ball in the shoulder, but
survived his wound till within a year or two of 1836, the time the
information was obtained. Before the ship left, a sort of peace was
patched up by means of presents, and the dead bodies which had been left
where they fell, apparently as a protest, were removed.

Cook describes the country as a narrow slip of low sand, backed by
well-wooded hills, rising in the interior into high mountains, on which
patches of snow cou