tributed among them. M. Rienzi then proceeds with the story of the conflict,—the first blood drawn by the whites:—
"About an hour after the French landed, Captain Marion landed. Advancing in front of him, one of the Aborigines offered him a lighted firebrand, that he might set light to a heap of wood heaped up on the flat shore. Marion took it, believing that it was a formality intended to give confidence to the savages; but hardly had the little pile of wood been enflamed, when the Aborigines retired in mass toward a little height, from which they threw afterwards a volley of stones, which wounded the two captains. They (the French) repelled them by several discharges of musket. They killed one aborigine and wounded several others, and the others fled howling towards the woods."
From another historian of the voyage we learn other particulars. A party of thirty Natives came down, the women carrying their children behind their backs, fastened on with ropes of rushes. The men were said to be carrying pointed sticks (spears) and stone axes. Presents of pieces of iron, looking-glasses, handkerchiefs, &c., were laid before them, but were rejected with sulky disdain. Some ducks and geese were tendered, but were angrily thrown back again. The fire-stick was presented to a sailor first, and afterwards to the captain. But evidently the act, supposed to be friendly, was taken in another spirit. They might have regarded it as a proof that the strangers intended an establishment upon their own hunting-grounds. The historian adds: "This was no sooner done, than they retired precipitately to a small hill, and threw a shower of stones, by which Captain Marion and the commander of the Castries were both wounded." Shots, of course, replied to the stones, and the Frenchmen returned to their boats. Sending their women backward to the covert of the forest, the wild men ran along the shore after their foes. The sailors put back towards the land to arrest the pursuit. At this moment an old chief assumed the leadership, and raised a hideous war-cry, when a storm of spears answered to his call. Fifteen Frenchmen now chased the assailants, and by their destructive fire killed and wounded several of them.
The unfortunate Marion met with his death in New Zealand. Though a French author describes his countrymen as being fattened for thirty-two days, to be eaten on the thirty-third, yet
