CHAPTER V.
NO MAN'S LAND "The wild justice of revenge." The Maoris told Cook that, years before the _Endeavour_ first entered Poverty Bay, a ship had visited the northern side of Cook's Strait and stayed there some time, and that a half-caste son of the captain was still living.

In one of his later voyages, the navigator was informed that a European vessel had lately been wrecked near the same part of the country, and that the crew, who reached the shore, had all been clubbed after a desperate resistance.

It is likely enough that many a roving mariner who touched at the islands never informed the world of his doings, and had, indeed, sometimes excellent reasons for secrecy.
Still, for many years after the misadventure of Marion du Fresne, the more prudent Pacific skippers gave New Zealand a wide berth.

When D'Entrecasteaux, the French explorer, in his voyage in search of the ill-fated _La Perouse_, lay off the coast in 1793, he would not even let a naturalist, who was on one of his frigates, land to have a glimpse of the novel flora of the wild and unknown land.

Captain Vancouver, in 1791, took shelter in Dusky Bay, in the sounds of the South Island.