Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/83

 Captain Cook’s stock I have no means of verifying. Eventually, they entirely disappeared.

Pheasants were first imported by Messrs. Smith and C. B. Robinson, in the Monarch. Mr. Robinson gave Mrs. Sinclair one pair. She kept them in a wire-house, but one having escaped, the other was let out. Instead of remaining in Pigeon Bay, the birds went straight over the hill to Port Levy in the early spring of 1850. They increased rapidly in Port Levy, but it was six years before they re-appeared in Pigeon Bay. Those were the English pheasants, and had no ring round the neck like the Chinese variety. These latter Mr. George Holmes imported in the middle of the “sixties.” The Chinese pheasants quite overwhelmed the English ones. Now both have completely disappeared from Banks Penisnula.

I have now to record, against a British subject, a deed of vile treachery that could not be surpassed by any savage. Captain Stewart, of the brig Elizabeth, has earned for his name an infamy of the deepest dye, and it is a pity he was never brought to justice and hanged, as he richly deserved to be. He consented, for the promise of a small