It was noon when we took leave of these two men, and proceeded down the north side of the bay, which I explored in my way, and the isles that lie in the middle.  Night, however, overtook us, and obliged me to leave one arm unlooked into, and hasten to the ship, which we reached by eight o’clock.  I then learnt that the man and his daughter stayed on board the day before till noon; and that having understood from our people what things were left in Cascade Cove, the place where they were first seen, he sent and took them away.  He and his family remained near us till today, when they all went away, and we saw them no more; which was the more extraordinary, as he never left us empty-handed.  From one or another he did not get less than nine or ten hatchets, three or four times that number of large spike-nails, besides many other articles.  So far as these things may be counted riches in New Zealand, he exceeds every man there; being, at this time, possessed of more hatchets and axes than are in the whole country besides.

In the afternoon of the 21st, I went with a party out to the isles on seal-hunting.  The surf ran so high that we could only land in one place, where we killed ten.  These animals served us for three purposes; the skins we made use of for our rigging; the fat gave oil for our lamps; and the flesh we eat.  Their haslets are equal to that of a hog, and the flesh of some of them eats little inferior to beef-steaks.  The following day nothing worthy of notice was done.

In the morning of the 23d, Mr Pickersgill, Mr Gilbert, and two others, went to the Cascade Cove, in order to ascend one of the mountains, the summit of which they reached by two o’clock in the afternoon, as we could see by the fire they made.  In the evening they returned on board, and reported that inland, nothing was to be seen but barren mountains, with huge craggy precipices, disjoined by valleys, or rather chasms, frightful to behold.  On the southeast side of Cape West, four miles out at sea, they discovered a ridge of rocks, on which the waves broke very high.  I believe these rocks to be the same we saw the evening we first fell in with the land.

Having five geese left out of those we brought from the Cape of Good Hope, I went with them next morning to Goose Cove (named so on this account,) where I left them.  I chose this place for two reasons; first, here are no inhabitants to disturb them; and, secondly, here being the most food, I make no doubt but that they will breed, and may in time spread over the whole country, and fully answer my intention in leaving them.  We spent the day shooting in and about the cove, and returned aboard about ten o’clock in the evening.  One of the party shot a white hern, which agreed exactly with Mr Pennant’s description, in his British Zoology, of the white herns that either now are, or were formerly, in England.