ransom. On the 28th September, the military were landed, and two unarmed and unattended natives advanced along the sands. One announced himself as the chief who retained the woman and child, and rubbed noses with Guard in token of amity, expressing his readiness to give them up on the receipt of the promised payment.' 'In reply,' as Mr. Marshall, assistant-surgeon of the Alligator, who witnessed the scene, states, he was instantly seized upon as a prisoner of war' (by order of Captain Johnson, commanding the detachment), dragged into the whaleboat, and despatched on board the Alligator, in custody of John Guard and his sailors. On his brief passage to the boat insult followed insult; one fellow twisting his ear by means of a small swivel which hung from it, and another pulling his long hair with spiteful violence; a third pricking him with the point of a bayonet. Thrown to the bottom of the boat, she was shoved off before he recovered himself, which he had no sooner succeeded in doing than he jumped overboard, and attempted to swim on shore, to prevent which he was repeatedly fired upon from the boat; but not until he had been shot in the calf of the leg was he again made a prisoner of. Having been a second time secured, he was lashed to a thwart, and

stabbed and struck so repeatedly, that, on reaching the Alligator, he was only able to gain the deck by a strong effort, and there, after staggering a few paces aft, fainted, and fell down at the foot of the capstan in a gore of blood. When I dressed his wounds, on a subsequent occasion, I found ten inflicted by the point and edge of the bayonet over his head and face, one in his left breast, which it was at first feared

would prove, what it was evidently intended to have proved, a mortal thrust, and another in the leg.'

"Captain Lambert, who did not himself see the seizure, admits that the chief was unarmed when he came down to the shore, and that he certainly was severely wounded: he had a ball through the calf of his leg, and he had been struck violently on the head.'

"Captain Johnson proceeded to the pah or fortified village, found it deserted, and burnt it the next morning. On the 30th September, Mrs. Guard and one child were given up, and the wounded chief thereupon was very properly sent on shore, without waiting for the delivery of the other child; but 'in the evening of the same day,' Captain Lambert states, 'I again sent Lieutenant Thomas to ask for the child, whose patience and firmness during the whole of the negotiations, notwithstanding the insults that were offered to him, merit the greatest praise. He shortly after returned on board, having been fired at from one of the pahs while waiting outside the surf. Such treachery could not be borne, and I immediately commenced firing at them from the ship; a reef of rocks, which extend some distance from the shore, I regret, prevented my getting as near them as I could have wished. Several shots fell into the pahs, and also destroyed their canoes.'*

"October 8. After some fruitless negotiation, all the soldiers and several seamen were landed, making a party of 112 men, and were stationed on two terraces of the cliff, one above the other, with a sixpounder carronade, while the interpreter and sailors were left below to wait for the boy. The New Zea* Parl. Papers, 1835. No. 585. p. 7.

landers approached at first with distrust; but at length a fine tall man came forward, and assured Mr. Marshall that the child should be immediately forthcoming, and also forbade our fighting, alleging that his tribe had no wish to fight at all.' Soon afterwards the boy was brought down on the shoulders of a chief, who expressed to Lieutenant M'Murdo his desire to go on board for the purpose of receiving a ransom:—

"On being told that none would be given, he turned away, when one of the sailors seized hold of the child, and discovered it was fastened with a strap or cord; to use his own expression, he had recourse to cutting away, and the child fell upon the beach. Another seaman, thinking the chief would make his escape, levelled his firelock, and shot him dead. The troops hearing the report of the musket, and thinking it was fired by the natives, immediately opened a fire from the top of the cliff upon them, who made a precipitate retreat to the pahs. The child being now in our possession, I made a signal to the ships for the boats, intending to reimbark the troops; but the weather becoming ́thick, and a shift of wind obliging the vessels to stand out to sea, and, at the same time, finding myself attacked by the natives, who were concealed in the high flax, I found my only alternative was to advance on the pahs. I therefore ordered Lieutenant Gunton with thirty men to the front, in skirmishing order, for the purpose of driving the natives from the high flax from which they were firing: this was done, and, as I have reason to think, with considerable loss on the part of the natives.'*

Captain Johnson's report to the Governor of New South Wales. Parl. Papers, 1835. No. 583, p. 10.

"The body of the chief is said to have been mutilated, and the head cut off by a soldier, and kicked about. It was identified by means of a brooch, which Mrs. Guard said belonged to the chief, who had adopted and protected her son. It is scarcely necessary to add, that this wanton act met with the reprobation it deserved from Captain Lambert and his officers.

"Captain Lambert states, that he should think there were between twenty and thirty of the natives wounded (and this, be it observed, after the child was recovered), but it was not ascertained. The English went straight forward to attack the pahs, and they had no communication with the natives after.' The troops immediately took possession of the two villages; and on quitting them, three days afterwards, burnt them to the ground.""

The language of Lord Goderich, on reviewing some of these cases, must be that of every honourable man.

"It is impossible to read, without shame and indignation, the details which these documents disclose. The unfortunate natives of New Zealand, unless some decisive measures of prevention be adopted, will, I fear, be shortly added to the number of those barbarous tribes who, in different parts of the globe, have fallen a sacrifice to their intercourse with civilized men, who bear and disgrace the name of Christians. . . . I cannot contemplate the too probable results without the deepest anxiety. There can be no more sacred duty than that of using every possible method to rescue the natives of those extensive islands from the further evils which impend over them, and to deliver our own country from the disgrace and crime of having either occasioned or tolerated such enormities.""

CHAPTER XXIX.

CONCLUSION.

Two gods divide them all-pleasure and gain :

For these they live, they sacrifice to these,

And in their service wage perpetual war

With conscience and with thee. Lust in their hearts,
And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth

To prey upon each other; stubborn, fierce,
High-minded, pouring out their own disgrace.
Thy prophets speak of such; and, noting down
The features of the last degenerate times,
Exhibit every lineament of these.

Come then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive one yet, as radiant as the rest,
Due to thy last and most effectual work,
Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world.

Cowper-The Task.

We have now followed the Europeans to every region of the globe, and seen them planting colonies, and peopling new lands, and everywhere we have found them the same-a lawless and domineering race, seizing on the earth as if they were the firstborn of creation, and having a presumptive right to murder and dispossess all other people. For more than three centuries we have glanced back at them in their course, and everywhere they have had the word of God in their mouth, and the deeds of darkness in