so that after ten or twelve years had passed
away these vegetables became the chief food of all the Maoris.

#5. French Visitors.#--Whilst Cook was sailing round the North Island, a
French vessel anchored in a bay of that island in search of fresh water.
The Ngapuhi tribe received them with pleasure and gave them all the
assistance in their power, but some of them stole a boat. The captain,
named De Surville, then seized one of the chiefs and put him in irons.
The boat not being given up, he burnt a village and sailed to South
America, the chief dying on the road.

Three years later in 1772 came another Frenchman, Marion du Fresne, with
two ships; this time for the express purpose of making discoveries. He
sailed up the west coast, rounded the North Cape and anchored in the Bay
of Islands. He landed and made friends with the Ngapuhi tribe and took
his sick sailors ashore. The Maoris brought him plenty of fish, and Du
Fresne made them presents in return. For a month the most pleasant
relations continued, the Maoris often sleeping on board and the French
officers spending the night in the Maori houses. One day Captain Marion
went ashore with sixteen others to enjoy some fishing. At night they did
not return. Captain Crozet, who was second in command, thought they had
chosen to sleep ashore, but the next day he sent a boat with twelve men
to find where they were. These men were scattering carelessly through
the woods when suddenly a dense crowd of Maoris, who had concealed
themselves, attacked and killed all the Frenchmen but one. He who
escaped was hidden behind some bushes, and he saw his comrades brained
one after another; then he saw the fierce savages cut their bodies in
pieces, and carry them away in baskets to be eaten. When the Maoris were
gone he crept along the shore and swam to the ship, which he reached
half dead with terror. Crozet landed sixty men, and the natives gathered
for a fight; but the Frenchmen merely fired volley after volley into a
solid mass of Maori warriors, who, stupefied at the flash and roar, were
simply slaughtered as they stood. Crozet burnt both the Maori villages
and sailed away. In later times the Maoris explained that the French had
desecrated their religious places by taking the carved ornaments out of
them for firewood.

#6. Cook's Later Visits.#--In his second voyage Cook twice visited New
Zealand in 1773 and 1774. He had two vessels, one of them under the
command of Captain F