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One of the French ships which were at anchor in the bay, was the Ajax Indiaman, bound to Pondicherry, commanded by Captain Crozet. He had been second in command with Captain Marion, who sailed from this place with two ships, in March 1772, as hath been already mentioned.
Crozet was so much struck with this circumstance that he does not hesitate to divide them into three classes whites, browns, and blacks, the last of whom he conceives to be a foreign admixture received from the neighbouring continent of New Holland, and who, by their union with the whites, the original inhabitants of the country, and still decidedly the prevalent race, have produced those of the intermediate colour.
We once sighted an island, which I believe was one of the Crozet group. In rather over three months we entered the Straits of Sunda, when, as we were approaching shores the inhabitants of which were addicted to piracy, we got up our guns from the hold and mounted them, and overhauled our firearms.
The good weather lasted, and on the 18th of August, in the afternoon, the look-out discerned the mountains of the Crozet group. The next day we passed Possession Island, which is inhabited only in the fishing season. At this period the only dwellers there are flocks of penguins, and the birds which whalers call ”white pigeons.” The approach to land is always interesting at sea.
But it leaks out from the statement of another officer that the thief was put in irons. We may believe that he was flogged also. Crozet marked the physical strength of the Maori, and was particularly struck with the lightness of the complexions of some, and the European cast of their features. One young man and a young girl were as white as the French themselves.
No sooner were they ashore and separated than each was surrounded and speared or tomahawked. Eleven were thus killed and savagely hacked to pieces. The sole survivor had fought his way into the scrub and escaped unnoticed. Crozet promptly dismantled his station, burying and burning all that could not be carried away, and marched his men to the boats.
Crozet moralizes on the malignant and unprovoked treachery of these savages. He pours out his contempt on the Parisian philosophes who idealized primitive man and natural virtue. For his part he would rather meet a lion or a tiger, for then he would know what to do! But there is another side to the story. The memory of the Wi-Wi, "the bloody tribe of Marion," lingered long in the Bay of Islands.
Besides this land, which Captain Crozet told us was a long but very narrow island, extending east and west, Captain Marion, in about the latitude of 48° south, and from 16° to 30° of longitude east of the Cape of Good Hope, discovered six islands, which were high and barren.
Crozet tells us that the only articles of furniture the French ever found in these huts, were fishing-hooks, nets, and lines, calabashes containing water, a few tools made of stone, and several cloaks and other garments suspended from the walls.
The Frenchman, Marion-Dufresne, discovered, in 1772, the Marion and Crozet Islands. In the same year Joseph de Kerguélen-Trémarec another Frenchman reached Kerguelen Land. This concludes the series of expeditions that I have thought it proper to class in the first group. "Antarctica," the sixth continent itself, still lay unseen and untrodden.
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