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did not commence at once, which possibly saved some trouble, but the day of meeting saw some 400 to 500 strangers arrive in hot blood ready to fight for the old custom, and it nearly came to a contest, only the renegades were too few; so that after three days’ feasting, koreroing, and blazing away powder, it was decided to cremate the boats. The boats were hauled to low water, covered with dry scrub, and burned, the natives, during the conflagration, doing a cry. Thus ended the largest native gathering on the Peninsula since the white man’s time.

Although the bays called Duvauchelle’s and Head of the Bay are often called by each others name, the bay in which Messrs. Piper, Barwick, and Libeau live is strictly Duvauchelle’s. That in which the County Council Office and Post Office is, is really the Head of the Bay. They are in reality one bay, though two distinct valleys run back. Mr. Libeau was the first white man who lived in Duvauchelle’s or Head of the Bay. He came ashore from a whaler and built a whâre on the spot where his son’s house now stands. He arrived a year after the French immigrants came out to Akaroa, and, was the father of the present resident. For many years the only inhabitants of the Head of the Bay were a number of sawyers. Many of them afterwards became settlers. Among them were Peter Connelly, Joseph Bruneau, Cortner Nicholas, Louis LeValliant, Bernard and his nephew, and Jas. Piper. The timber