lines. After breakfast three of us went to try our luck, and before noon returned with eight dozen more, chiefly trumpeters. There are very few ducks or wild-fowl here. The barometer is very low—28⋅10. I expect we shall have more wind than we want to-morrow.
Wednesday, September 13.—It rained heavily until day broke this morning, when the rain ceased; but it continued calm, with dark, gloomy, threatening weather. Soon after daybreak Cross and I took the boat and pulled round to a small bay to the northward of the one the cutter lay in. We knew that many years ago there were some Maoris living somewhere in Wilson's Bay, but we did not know in which part of it. This small bay, however, proves to be the spot, and a lovely spot it is. It is certainly the most beautiful site for a settlement that I have seen in New Zealand, and seldom elsewhere. The basin in which this charming site is situated is perhaps two miles in circumference, with a small, round, wooded island in its centre, and its waters are as calm and smooth as a millpond. It is impossible for any wind to ruffle or disturb them, and the swell, which seems to reach almost every other nook and corner of this extensive bay, is effectually shut out from it by two reefs, which stretch out from each entrance-point, overlapping each other, but leaving a deep and safe channel between, through which the largest ship could be warped, and find a sufficient depth when inside for mooring in. Its shores, on all sides, excepting the north, are rocky, and clad from the water's edge to the top of the hills with an abundant growth of large timber of various kinds. The northern side is where the people have lived. It has a sand beach about half a mile long, and the land next the beach is slightly elevated, and level for a short distance back to the foot of the hills, which rise without undulation to the height of about 300 feet. From the quantity of land which has been cleared, I judge that a good many people have lived here. At 9 o'clock in the morning we up anchor
