LITMIR.BIZ

      4

      At Wellington

      The city of Wellington is built on the southwest point of North Island at the far side of a horseshoe-shaped bay. Well protected from the sea winds, it offers excellent moorings. The brig had been favored by the weather, but such was not always the case. It was often difficult to navigate in Cook Strait, which is crossed by currents whose speed sometimes reaches ten knots, even though the tides in the Pacific are never strong. The seafarer Tasman,¹ to whom is credited the first discovery of New Zealand in December 1642, ran great risks of running aground and then being attacked by the natives. Hence the name “Bay of the Massacre,”² which figures in the geographic nomenclature of the straits. The Dutch navigator lost four of his men who were devoured by cannibals on that shore, and, a hundred years later, the English navigator, James Cook, left in their hands the crew of one of the ships in his fleet, commanded by Captain Furneaux.³ Finally, two years later, the French navigator Marion Dufresne⁴ and sixteen of his men met their death in an attack of the most frightful savagery.

      In 1840, in the month of March, Dumont d’Urville,⁵ aboard Astrolabe and Zélée, passed by Otago Bay of the southern island and visited the Snare Islands and Stewart Island at the southern end of Tawaï-Pounamou. Then he sojourned in the port of Akaroa, where he had no need to complain about the natives. The memory of this illustrious explorer’s passage is marked by the island that bears his name. Inhabited only by bands of penguins and albatrosses, it is separated from South Island by the “French Pass,” where the sea is so treacherous that ships do not voluntarily enter into its channel.⁶

      Today, under the authority of the British flag, at least as far as the Maoris are concerned, every security is assured in the latitudes of New Zealand. The dangers that were of human origin have been warded off. Only those in the sea continue, and even so, they are of a lesser sort, thanks to the hydrographic maps of the area and to the establishment of the gigantic lighthouse built on an isolated rock in front of the Nicholson Bay,⁷ where Wellington is located.

      It was in the month of January 1849 that the New Zealand Land Company sent the Aurora to establish settlers on the shores of these distant lands. The population of the two islands counts no less than eight hundred thousand inhabitants, and Wellington, the capital of the colony, is itself home to some thirty thousand.

      The city is pleasantly situated, solidly constructed, and has broad streets that are properly maintained. Most of the houses are built of wood (for earthquakes are frequent in the southern province) as are the public structures, among others the governmental palace in the middle of its beautiful park and the cathedral, whose religious character does not exempt it from such earthly cataclysms.⁸ This city, less important, less industrial, and less commercial than its two or three rivals in New Zealand, will equal them someday no doubt, given the drive and colonizing genius of Great Britain. In any case, with its University, its Legislative House composed of fifty-four members, among them four Maoris named by the governor, its House of Representatives coming directly from popular suffrage, its colleges, its schools, its museum, its productive factories for frozen meats, its model prison, its squares, and its public gardens, where electricity is going to replace gas, Wellington boasts an exceptional standard of living, which many cities in the Old and the New World might envy.

      If the James Cook did not tie up at the dock, it was because Captain Gibson wanted to make it more difficult for the men to desert.⁹ Gold fever exerted its influence here as it did in Dunedin or in the other New Zealand ports. Several ships found it impossible to cast off. Mr. Gibson wanted to take every precaution to maintain his crew at full strength, even those recruits from the Three Magpies whom he would willingly exchange for others. Besides, his stopover in Wellington would be of short duration, scarcely twenty-four hours.

      The first people to receive him on his visit were Mr. Hawkins and Nat Gibson. The captain had been brought ashore as soon as he arrived in port, and eight bells were striking when he presented himself at Mr. Hawkins’s office, situated at the far end of one of the streets that ran down to the port.