Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/98

sula in 1838 by Commodore Cuille, of the Heroine. Three days later the French frigate L’ Aube, commanded by Commodore Lavaud, arrived, and on August the 13th, two days later, the immigrants also, having been on board from the latter end of February. Among the stores brought were six long 24-pounders, which, upon Captain Stanley’s remonstrating with Commodore Lavaud, were not allowed to be landed. Mr. Robinson, who came from the Bay of Islands in another vessel, was left there as magistrate, and from the Gazette we learn that the Commodore was particularly hospitable, and offered to send his carpenter on shore to build a house for Mr. Robinson, and insisted upon that gentleman’s living on board the L’Aube during her stay in the waters of the Peninsula, which offer, of course, was gratefully accepted until the completion of the magisterial residence. On the 19th the immigrants landed in ‘a sheltered, well-chosen part of the bay, where they could not interfere with any one,’ and commenced, with the characteristic industry of the French workman, to erect houses and cultivate land; and so successful was one of the cultivators, that the Constitutionnel of the following year, commenting on the progress of the Colony, stated that one of the colonists, who had planted himself a league from Akaroa, had, with the aid of his wife, from two acres and a half of land, cleared, in five months, 1500f. by the sale of vegetables. The English inhabitants of the Peninsula, at the time of the landing of the French immigrants, amounted to 84 adults, and their children, so from this source the 1500f. would probably partially come. At the end of the year the immigrants had not procured any stock, but were living on preserved and salt meats, with what vegetables they could get from their ‘small gardens,’ while the commodore of the L’Aube had commenced building a store for them, to protect their property