Revision as of 12:34, 1 September 2007

doc. 70 — 20 August 1840.

— Letter from Jean-Baptiste Comte to Jean-Claude Colin

Partial translation by Fr Charles Girard SM

[1] I was called back from Hokianga for the mission in the South Island, called Te Wai-pounamou by the local people. Father Pezant and I had gone aboard the Aube at the Bay of Islands on the 30 July. We entered the port of Akaroa on the 15th of the month of August, the day of the Assumption. So now, twice have I celebrated this beautiful feast while at sea. On the next day in the evening, two canon shots were heard at the entrance to the port. It was the Comte de Paris.^[1] Its foremast had been shattered by two lightning bolts during the same night.^[2] Two colonists died before landing.^[3] In the political order, matters seem very confused. England has declared sovereignty over all of New Zealand. Some Englishmen claim that they made their purchases before the French.^[4] I do not know at all how matters will turn out. Here in Akaroa there are only about thirty natives. Around the neighboring bay and in the north of Akaroa there are 200 natives, it is said. There you have the number of inhabitants of the Banks peninsula. They all follow the Methodist religion.

[2] We will settle among the French colonists. Father Pezant will be in charge of them. As for myself, I will move to that bay I spoke about where the natives are more numerous. I do not know if I will be able to go there by land. Rather high mountains have to be crossed. They are capped with snow and the natives do not like to walk barefoot on sugar; that is the name they give to snow and to white sugar. It is said that these natives are very bad and that they are still not repelled by the taste of human flesh. All of that means nothing. Nothing will happen to us without the permission of God. We have Mary as our mother. She will take care of her children. The natives whom I have seen here seem very good; they have assured me that those of Port Cooper were not bad at all. There is some difference between the language here and that of the North Island. [...]

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== Notes ==

1. ↑ See doc. 58, § 1, n. 1. The Comte de Paris, while transporting the French colonists from Rochefort, was severely damaged during a storm at sea near the coast of Australia on 14 May 1840; the foremast and the mainmast were shattered by lightning bolts, but on 9 August it finally reached Pigeon Bay in the north of the Banks peninsula. There, on the 11 and 12 August, Captain Jean Langlois (founder of the Compagnie nanto-bordelaise, under which the colonization of Akaroa was being carried out) made a payment in goods to the Maori of the place for the purchase of a part of the peninsula, (he had already done the same thing on 2 August 1838), and he still had to pay more goods to a few chiefs in the region of Akaroa on the south coast. He arrived at the entrance to the Bay of Akaroa around noon on the 16 August 1840; unable to advance for lack of wind, he cast anchor, of which one of the points broke off and the ship slid toward the shore. Efforts were made to hold it back, and the “canon shots” were not only to announce its presence but were also asking for help. It was only the next day, the 17th, that it entered the cove of Paka Ariki (today called French Bay). Two large tents were erected to shelter the colonists who went ashore only on the 19 August (Buick, p. 110-114, 122-126; Faivre, p. 456-457).
2. ↑ Not only the foremast but the mainmast as well had been shattered by lightning bolts, and that had taken place three months earlier (see previous note).
3. ↑ Two children, of the Gendrot and Chardin families, died on the day before the entrance to Pigeon Bay was sighted; they were buried during the intermediate landing there (see Buick, p. 112).
4. ↑ The two clouds of English sovereignty and contested property titles cast their shadow over the French colony of Akaroa. Lavaud (on the Aube which left Brest on 19 February 1840) and Langlois and the French colonists (who followed on 20 March on board the Comte de Paris) would not have been able in any way to know about the treaty of Waitangi of 6 February 1840 and the proclamations of the English lieutenant-governor Hobson; Lavaud’s finesse in handling matters softened the bad luck of the colony. As far was the property titles were concerned, the question was also complicated by acts of sale in which there was not much clarity and by the number of Māori chiefs who claimed their rights; at the end, however, the few Frenchmen who remained in Akaroa and the surrounding area kept ownership of their settlements (Buick, p. 67-71, 118-122, 302-317; Faivre, p. 452-455).

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