ill them; though, I must own, I put no
great faith in this. The animals which Captain Furneaux sent on shore
here, and which soon after fell into the hands of the natives, I was now
told were all dead; but I could get no intelligence about the fate of
those I had left in West Bay, and in Cannibal Cove, when I was here in
the course of my last voyage. However, all the natives whom I conversed
with, agreed, that poultry are now to be met with wild in the woods
behind Ship Cove; and I was afterward informed, by the two youths who
went away with us, that Tiratou, a popular chief amongst them, had a
great many cocks and hens in his separate possession, and one of the
sows.

On my present arrival at this place, I fully intended to have left not
only goats and hogs, but sheep, and a young bull, with two heifers, if I
could have found either a chief powerful enough to protect and keep
them, or a place where there might be a probability of their being
concealed from those who would ignorantly attempt to destroy them. But
neither the one nor the other presented itself to me. Tiratou was now
absent; and Tringoboohee, whom I had met with during my last voyage, and
who seemed to be a person of much consequence at that time, had been
killed five months ago, with about seventy persons of his tribe; and I
could not learn that there now remained in our neighbourhood any tribe,
whose numbers could secure to them a superiority of power over the rest
of their countrymen. To have given the animals to any of the natives who
possessed no such power, would not have answered the intention; for in a
country like this, where no man's property is secure, they would soon
have fallen a prey to different parties, and been either separated or
killed, but most likely both. This was so evident, from what we had
observed since our arrival, that I had resolved to leave no kind of
animal till Matahouah and the other chief solicited me for the hogs and
goats. As I could spare them, I let them go, to take their chance. I
have at different times, left in New Zealand not less than ten or a
dozen hogs, besides those put on shore by Captain Furneaux. It will be a
little extraordinary, therefore, if this race should not increase and be
preserved here, either in a wild or in a domestic state, or in both.

We had not been long at anchor near Motuara, before three or four
canoes, filled with natives, came off to us from the S.E. side of the
sound; and a brisk trade