From the Diary of M. Gaimard.

5th February—A few hours' halt in the small Bay of Houa-Houa (Cook's Tolaga Bay) was useful in more than one respect. Our trip to Cook's watering place gave us the New Zealand plover and a few Haliotis [ear-shells]. The natives who came to visit us in their elegant canoes, brought us flax cloaks, pigs, and potatoes that they bartered for axes, knives, materials of various kinds, fish-hooks, and powder. The last-named is sufficient indication that firearms are known here: they are, in fact, the most highly-valued objects of barter. Pigs were so plentiful that sometimes it was possible to get one weighing about sixty pounds for an old knife only worth a few coppers.

Their daughters and sometimes even their wives constituted another means of barter and one no less important perhaps; these they offer to page 213foreigners in exchange for necklaces, handkerchiefs, and powder. Several of the women spent the night on board trading their charms. What characterized them particularly was that they delighted in stealing anything that they could lay hands on, especially when chance took them into one of the bedrooms of the senior officers. Watches, sheets, pillows, etc., they took everything. One must add that whatever one gives them and whatever they manage to steal immediately becomes the property of the chief; and they count themselves fortunate when he is content to despoil them without ill-treating them.

The drawing that M. de Sainson made of Cook's watering place gives an excellent idea of the place.