He even admired Kahoora's courage, and was not a little pleased with the confidence with which he had put himself into his power.

Kahoora had placed his whole safety in the declarations that Captain Cook had uniformly made to the New Zealanders; which were that he had always been a friend to them all, and would continue to be so, unless they gave him cause to act otherwise; that as to their inhuman treatment of our people, he should think no more of it, the transaction having happened long ago, and when he was not present; but that, if ever they made a second attempt of the same kind, they might rest assured of feeling the weight of his resentment.
While our commander on the 16th, was making an excursion for the purposes of collecting food for his cattle, he embraced the opportunity to inquire, as accurately as possible, into the circumstances which had attended the melancholy fate of our countrymen.

Omai was his interpreter on this occasion.

The result of the inquiry was, that the quarrel first took its rise from some thefts, in the commission of which the natives were detected; that there was no premeditated plan of bloodshed; and that if these thefts had not, unfortunately, been too hastily resented, no mischief would have happened.

Kahoora's greatest enemies, and even the very men that had most earnestly solicited his destruction, confessed, at the same time, that he had no intention of quarrelling with Captain Furneaux's people, and much less of killing any of them, till the fray had actually commenced.
Captain Cook continued in this his last visit to New Zealand, the solicitude he had formerly shewn to be of some essential future service to the country.