Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/100

ceedings the original question as to what extent the Native title has been extinguished by the French Company has never been decided.’

“After the cession of the territory to the New Zealand Company, the French Government offered to take the emigrants free of charge to Tahiti, and give them the same amount of property as they possessed in New Zealand, but they all declined the offer.”

As a fitting narrative to follow the last, the compiler has selected the following account of the French settlement, principally written from information furnished by Mr. Waeckerlie, one of the original settlers, who came in the Comte de Paris.

About the year 1820, the adventurous seamen who had hitherto captured the whale in the Northern Ocean, found that the fish were fast decreasing in number, and turned longing eyes to the vast waters of the South Pacific, which voyagers had told them swarmed not only with many varieties of the whale tribe found in the north, but also with the huge sperm, whose oil was of great value, as well as the spermaceti found in its head. A few soon ventured, and their good reports and great success induced many to follow their example. At first the Cape of Good Hope was chosen as the centre of the operations of those daring men, whose lives were in continual peril, but whose profits were enormous; but year by year they fished further and further, and the coasts of Australia and New Zealand were soon made the scene of their dangerous avocation.

About 1835, before the first representative of England (Captain Hobson) had taken up his residence in Auckland, an adventurous French mariner, named Captain L’Anglois, came on a whaling cruise