Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/94

In this and following numbers an account is given of the foundation of the French Colony in Akaroa, and the causes that led to it. The subject is a most interesting one, and so it has been endeavored to procure information from every available source. This number is taken from “Odd Chapters from New Zealand History,” originally published in the New Zealander, and there entitled

“Though, perchance, somewhat out of chronological order, the attempt to form a French settlement in the Middle Island may follow, pertinently, in these papers, the narration of the intention to found a semi-French kingdom in these Islands. That the French Government had serious intentions of establishing colonies in the South Pacific, and a penal colony in New Zealand, is apparent from the angry debates in the French Chamber of Deputies on the 27th, 28th, and 29th of May, 1844, when M. Guizot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that after ‘repeatedly repudiating the sovereignty of New Zealand, the British Government was induced, by the proceedings of a rich and powerful company (the New Zealand Company), to adopt measures by which the acquisition of that sovereignty had been completed, at a time when vessels from France were on their voyage to New Zealand for the like purpose.’ M. Guizot was, however, misinformed, as the sovereignty was proclaimed prior to the despatch of the vessels mentioned.

“In August, 1838, a Captain L’Anglois, the master of a French whaler, purchased, he asserted, from the Natives on Banks Peninsula, a block of land defined in the claim as follows:—‘All Banks