CHAPTER V. VISITS OF CAPTAINS DE SURVILLE, ST. ALOUARN, AND MARION DU FRESNE, TO AUSTRALIA, VAN DIEMEN's LAND, AND NEW ZEALAND, IN 1769 AND 1772.
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CHAPTER V.
VISITS OF CAPTAINS DE SURVILLE, ST. ALOUARN, AND MARION DU FRESNE, TO AUSTRALIA, VAN DIEMEN's LAND, AND NEW ZEALAND, IN 1796 AND 1772.
De Surville and Cook crossed at the mouth of Doubtless Bay, New Zealand, without seeing each other. --De Surville's treachery to the natives. --Carried off one, who pined and died. --De Surville drowned at Callao. --St. Alouarn's visit. --Marion du Fresne massacred with a number of his men. --The French version of the affair. --The native version of it.
DE SURVILLE was the next navigator who visited Hew Zealand. When Cook's ship, the Endeavour, was working out of Doubtless Bay in the North Island, De Surville's vessel, the St. Jean Baptiste from India, was sailing on, and neither navigator was aware of the other's vicinity.
What led to this Frenchman's visit was a rumour, widely circulated and universally believed, that the English had discovered an island of gold in the Southern Ocean. De Surville anchored his ship in Doubtless Bay in December, 1769, and immediately landed at Mongonia, and was received by crowds of natives, who were delighted and surprised at the confidence reposed in them, and, in return, they supplied the strangers with food and water. One day a storm arose as a party of invalids were endeavouring to reach the ship from the shore. Being driven back, the sick were detained by the inclemency of the weather for two days in the house of a chief named Naginoui, and by his people they were fed and carefully attended without remuneration. When the storm subsided, one of the ship's boats was missing, and De Surville, without any evidence for so doing, believed that the New Zealanders had stolen it. Under the guise of friendship, he invited Naginoui on board, accused him of the theft, and put him in irons. Not satisfied with this treacherous revenge, he burned the
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VOYAGE OF MARION DU FRESNE.
village where his sick had found an asylum in the hour of need, and carried the chief away from his native land.
Naginoui did not survive his capture long; he pined for fern-root, wept that he would never again behold his children, and died of a broken heart eighty days after his seizure. Men's evil deeds are occasionally punished in this world, and so were De Surville's; for eleven days after Naginoui's death, he was drowned in the surf when landing at Callao, in Peru. --Abbe Rochon's Voyages, 1791.
Amongst all nations crime begets crime, and retaliation, not forgiveness, is the ruling principle in the human breast. Three years after Naginoui's capture, and not far from the scene of it, Marion du Fresne landed in New Zealand. It was on the 11th of May, 1772, that this unfortunate man anchored his two ships between Te Wai-iti Whais Island and the Motu Arohia (the Motuaro of navigators), in the Bay of Islands, vol. i. p. 233.
Of the visit of St. Alouarn to the western coast of Australia, nothing seems to he known, except that he saw some points of land, or islands, on a voyage in the French flute Le Gros Ventre, in 1772.
Of Marion's voyage more is known, though it added little or no new information to that of previous navigators. He sailed in the Mascarin, accompanied by the Marquis de Castries, from the Mauritius early in the year 1772, chiefly in search of the supposed southern continent, and arrived off the west coast of Van Diemen's Land on the 3rd of March, of that year, being the first who visited Tasmania after Tasman. He saw an opening leading to the northward, which was probably Bass's Straits, but gave it only a passing notice. Steering south-east and then northward, he passed round all the rocks and islands of the south coast till he reached the Frederick Hendrik's Bay of Tasman. He saw fires and smoke on land, and soon had about thirty men on the shore looking at the ships. On a party landing, the natives received them in a friendly manner, and presented them with a lighted stick, and pointed to a pile of dry
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MARION MASSACRED.
wood, as though they expected them to set fire to it as a token of friendship. They complied, and the natives appeared satisfied. Soon after, Captain Marion himself going on shore, the same ceremony took place; but the moment the pile began to blaze, the natives all retreated precipitately to a little hill near, and thence discharged at them a shower of stones. Both Captain Marion and the commander of the De Castries were wounded. It does not appear how the first act should he taken as a matter of friendship, and the second, precisely the same, as one of hostility; but the French, incensed at their treatment, fired on the natives in return, and then open war began. The excited natives sent the women and children into the woods, and assailed the French with their lances. Proceeding along the shore to their boats, the French were fiercely pursued, and a black servant wounded in the leg with a spear. On this, the French fired more determinedly on the natives, killing one of them, and wounding several others. The natives, terrified at this, fled, carrying the wounded with them, and retreated into the woods with wild howlings. A detachment of fifteen men, armed with musquets, was despatched after them, who only came up with one who was dying in the forest.
Before this misunderstanding, the natives had appeared very friendly, but did not set any value on the nails, little looking-glasses, and other things that they offered them. After the affray, it was necessary to send such parties as had to seek water on shore well armed. The descriptions of the country, and the people, and their habits, are exactly those of other navigators. Marion, not succeeding in procuring water, or conciliating the natives, sailed away from Van Diemen's Land on the 10th of March, and directed his course towards New Zealand, where, on arriving in the Bay of Islands, he was massacred by the natives. Various versions of this tragical event have been given. The one detailed in the account of his voyage, published in Paris in 1783, as given by Crozet, the captain of the Mascarin, is as fol-
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CROZET'S NARRATIVE OF THE MASSACRE.
lows:-- "His masts being damaged, and not being able to find any trees in Van Diemen's Land suitable for making new ones, he looked out for them here. He found excellent pines, but at such a distance from the shore that he was obliged to cut a road through the dense woods for three miles. The natives appeared on the best terms with them, and Marion had one party of his men on an island in the bay cleaning the casks preparatory to refilling them with fresh water. Another party was in the wood cutting down the trees. After thirty-three days of peaceful intercourse, Captain Marion is represented as setting out one evening to visit his different parties at their work. He had been to the watered on the island, and had gone to a hippah of the natives on a hill, where he was accustomed to call on his way into the woods, where Captain Crozet was superintending the operations of the wood-cutters. Here, it is said, that he was suddenly and unexpectedly set upon and murdered together with his few attendants and the boats' crew awaiting him on shore. The alarm was given to Captain Crozet in the wood, who managed to get on board with all his people safe, but had scarcely pushed off from the shore when a host of natives set up their song of defiance, and discharged vollies of stones at them. An attack was then planned against the waterers on the island by night, but was defeated. This having failed, a hundred large canoes openly attacked the ships themselves, and paid dearly for their temerity. As it was impossible to procure the necessary timber without driving the hostile natives from the neighbourhood, Captain Crozet determined to attack and destroy their hippah. The natives boasted that he would find it impregnable, but he soon carried it, killing many of them and putting the rest to flight. After this he completed his operations in peace, and, after an abode of sixty-four days in the Bay of Islands, sailed thence for the South Sea Islands."
Here we have the narrative of the massacre of Marion and a boat's crew of his men as given by Crozet, Marion's
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THE NEW ZEALANDERS' VERSION.
second in command; but Dr. Thomson, in his "Story of New Zealand," gives us the New Zealanders' version of this affair: -
"Crozet in his narrative repeatedly states that the French gave no cause of offence--that up to the fatal day nothing could exceed the apparent harmony in which both races lived. 'They treated us,' says Crozet, 'with every show of friendship for thirty-three days with the intention of eating us the thirty-fourth.' Such is the French account of Marion's massacre; the native version of the affair I accidentally heard on a singular occasion. During the winter quarter of 1851, the French corvette L'Alcmene, thirty-two guns, commander Count D'Harcourt, was totally wrecked, and ten lives lost on the west coast of New Zealand, the opposite side of the island, but only fifty miles distant from the place of Marion's massacre. As several men were severely wounded when the ship foundered, the governor requested me to go and assist their transit across the country to Auckland. When so employed, I awoke one night, and saw a crowd of New Zealanders talking earnestly round a fire. There were upwards of a hundred French sailors, and nearly two hundred natives, plunged in sleep in the open air all about. Hearing the name of Marion mentioned, I pretended sleep, and listened to the conversation. From many words, I gathered that two vessels commanded by Marion, belonging to the same nation as the shipwrecked sailors, visited the Bay of Islands, and that a strong friendship sprung up between both races, and that they planted the garlic which flavours the milk, butter, and flesh of cows fed in that district. Before the Wiwis, as the French are now called, departed, they violated sacred places, cooked food with tapued wood, and put two chiefs in irons; that in revenge their ancestors killed Marion, and several of his crew, and in the same spirit the French burned villages, and shot many New Zealanders.
"From inquiries made on the spot in 1853, the above narrative and the reasons assigned for Marion's murder dr. Thomson's remarks.
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are, I believe, correct. No man was then alive at the Bay of Islands who had witnessed the affair, and only two old men were acquainted with the particulars of it, although his name was familiar to all. According to the native story, the French, not they, were the aggressors. 'We treated Marion's party,' the New Zealanders may say, 'with every kindness for thirty days, and on the thirty-first they put two of our chiefs in irons, and burnt our sacred places.'
"Civilized men, who judge savage races by civil laws, may deem the native cause assigned for Marion's massacre frivolous; but those acquainted with the ancient customs of the New Zealanders must admit that violating sacred places and enslaving sacred chiefs are ample provocations for strife. The circumstance related of the natives having ceased visiting the ships before Marion's massacre, was a sure sign of hostility. It also affords an evident proof that the whole tale is not told, and that Crozet's narrative is garbled."--Vol. i. p. 236.
