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From the same gentleman, we learnt, that the ship which had been at Otaheite before our first arrival there this voyage, was from New Spain; and that, in her return, she had discovered some islands in the latitude of 32° S., and under the meridian of 130° W. Some other islands, said to be discovered by the Spaniards, appeared on this chart; but Captain Crozet seemed to think they were inserted from no good authorities.
Through all their friendly intercourse, however, it was ominous that they breathed no word of Cook or De Surville. Moreover, a day came on which one of them stole Marion's sword. Crozet goes out of his way to describe how the kindly captain refused to put the thief in irons, though the man's own chief asked that it should be done.
In general, however, the New Zealanders are a tall race of men, many of the individuals belonging to the upper classes being six feet high and upwards. They are also described as strong, active, and almost uniformly well-shaped. Their hair is commonly straight, but sometimes curly; Crozet says he saw a few of them with red hair.
Crozet, however, asserts, in his account of Marion's voyage that they found what he calls the cedar of New Zealand to weigh no heavier than the best Riga fir. Nicholas brought some of the seeds of the New Zealand phormium with him to England in 1815; but unfortunately they lost their vegetative properties during the voyage.
The British Admiralty sent him out with orders to discover the great southern continent, or prove that it did not exist. The expedition, consisting of two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure, left Plymouth on July 13, 1772. After a short stay at Madeira it reached Cape Town on October 30. Here Cook received news of the discovery of Kerguelen and of the Marion and Crozet Islands.
Crozet calls the kauri trees cedars, and is full of praises of their size and quality. He was the officer in charge of the woodcutters. On the 13th June he saw marching towards his camp a detachment from the ship fully armed and with the sun flashing on their fixed bayonets. At once it occurred to him that something must be amiss otherwise why fixed bayonets?
Crozet says that every one of these kitchens has in it a cooking hole, dug in the ground, of about two feet in diameter, and between one and two feet deep.
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.
De Crozet did not hesitate to throw away his own charts when he recognised the superiority of Cook's; and Dumont d'Urville calls him "the most illustrious navigator of both the past and future ages whose name will for ever remain at the head of the list of sailors of all nations."
As no names had been assigned to them in a chart of the Southern Ocean, which Captain Crozet communicated to Captain Cook in 1775, our commander distinguished the two larger ones by calling them Prince Edward's Islands, after his majesty's fourth son. To the other four, with a view of commemorating the discoverers, he gave the name of Marion's and Crozet's Islands.
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