1814, and also in another by Sir Thomas Brisbane, dated the 17th of
May, 1824. So strong a feeling, indeed, had been excited upon this
subject among the more respectable inhabitants of the English colony,
that, in the year 1814, a society was formed in Sydney Town, with the
Governor at its head, for the especial protection of the natives of the
South Sea Islands against the oppressions practised upon them by the
crews of European vessels.

The reports of the missionaries likewise abound in notices of the
flagrant barbarities by which, in New Zealand, as well as elsewhere, the
white man has signalised his superiority over his darker-complexioned
brother. But it may be enough to quote one of their statements, namely,
that within the first two or three years after the establishment of the
society's settlement at the Bay of Islands, not less than a hundred at
least of the natives had been murdered by Europeans in their immediate
neighbourhood. With such facts on record, it ought indeed to excite but
little of our surprise, that the sight of the white man's ship in their
horizon should be to these injured people in every district the signal
for a general muster, to meet the universal foe, and, if it may be
accomplished by force or cunning, to gratify the great passion of savage
life--revenge.

The circumstances of this attack are all illustrative of the New Zealand
character; and, indeed, the whole narrative is strikingly accordant
with the accounts we have from other sources of the manner in which
these savages are wont to act on such occasions, although there
certainly never has before appeared so minute and complete a detail of
any similar transaction. The gathering of the inland population by fires
lighted on the hills, the previous crowding and almost complete
occupation of the vessel, the sly and patient watching for the moment of