Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/85

 seizing a chance, he killed his daughter with his own hand to put her beyond the fate which he knew awaited her. When handed over to Te Rauparaha he suffered a terrible death.

Captain Stewart’s reward for this despicable subservience to a savage warrior was to have been a load of scraped flax, and there is some comfort in the reflection that he never got it. After his share in the massacre at Wainui, Stewart went to Sydney, where an attempt was made to prosecute him, but he got off owing to deficient evidence.

This scoundrel must not be confounded with the Captain Stewart who gave his name to Stewart Island. The latter was known in the early days as “The Discoverer,” was highly respected, and died in Poverty Bay in 1843 or 1844.

When I was young, flounders were very plentiful in Pigeon Bay. It was the habit of those fish to come up at night into the estuary of the small creek that entered the sea at the head of the Bay. They went out again by the morning tide. In the summer time, at full moon, by torch and spear, we have taken as many as 200 in one night. We kept them in salt water for many days until we got through them.