AN INCIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF OTAGO.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 129, 31 May 1872, Page 4

AN INCIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF OTAGO.

A correspondent of an Otago paper relates the following regarding the ,{tradition " about the " irruption of dark skins.'*" The brig Elizabeth, a Sydneytrader, called in at Kapiti Island, Cook's Straits. The natives there agreed with the captain (whose name I cannot at this present moment remember) to load his vessel with flax if he would first take a war party numbering about 40 to Otago (then called Port Oxley), and assist them in inveigling some of the natives there on board the brig under pretence of trading. The iniquitous bargain was struck, the war party shipped, and the vessel some days after dropped anchor off Tairoa Head. The Kapiti men kept below while canoes from the shore came alongside. Among the natives who stepped on board was the head chief Maironue, with his wife and two chiltJren. They were invited into the cabin — a preconcerted signal was given, up sprang the invaders and secured almost all the Otago natives that were on board. The chief was, however, the one tbey were most anxious to secure. He and his wife and children were pinioned, and secured in the forehold, to be reserved for torture on the return home of the expedition. A great slaughter of the other prisoners was made, and their bodies were cooked in the ship's coppers for food on the homeward voyage to Kapiti, in the course of which Maironue's wife strangled herself with a piece of flax, tied one end to her foot and the other round her neck by a running noose. Her husband contrived to loosen his bonds and kill the two children to save them from the torture, but with true nobility (accrding to his savage code of honor) refrained from taking his own life. His landing took place amidst great rejoicings, he having some time previously killed a Kapiti chief at Cloudy Bay, Queen Charlotte's Sound. It is told that after the ordinary modes of torture had been exhausted, Maironue was tied by the legs and suspended from the branch of a tree, head downwards, and that while in this position the wife of the chief he had killed was allowed to approach and make an incision in his neck to which ■ she applied her lips and drank his blood, saying as. Bhe finished the draught, that ** her reyenge was satisfied;" And now for tbe sequel of the- story. f ; The captain of the EHzabetli ..haying .performed his 3>art of c the :pomji^ tb^

he imagined, and was ultimately glad to make his escape with his vessel and about two tons of flax. He went by way of the North Cape, bound for Sydney, and encountered westerly gales which drove his vessel about 70 miles north of Howe's Island, where she raD, with all sails set, on to a coral reef. No tidings were evetheard of any of the crew, who, it is supposed, took to their boats and were lost. Tbe ship was met with some time afterwards by the brig Highlander, of Hobart Town, Captain Lovett, with whom Captain Howell, now of Riverton, was then sailing as chief officer. The attention of those on board was attracted by seeing a vessel with sails hanging loose, and imagining there was mutiny or something wrong on board, Captain Lovett hove-to and sent a boat. It was then found, as I have said, that she was hard, and fast on a coral reef, the existence of which was previously unknown, and which was then named, and is to this day known as the Elizabeth Reef.