A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 November 1924, Page 6

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

STORY OF A CANIBAL FEAST. ' LONDON, September 24. A hundred years ago on Saturday there appeared in the Observer a paragraph taken from the Boston Advertiser. It relates to one of the early voyages to New Zealand, and to cannibal masts at ‘‘Sandy Bay.” The story is reprinted in the current number of the Sunday Observer. “In the brig Sultana, which arrived at this port yesterday from London, came Mr Joseph Price, of Wilmington, Delaware, who was one of the crew of the brig General Gates, of Boston, and was taken prisoner by the Natives of New Zealand. The General Gates sailed from / Boston in 1821, on a sailing voyage, and on the 10th of August following, Price was landed with five others on the coast of New Zealand to catch seals. “After remaining there six weeks, having procured 3563 skins, they were Liken by a. party of natives of New Zealand at 10 or 11 o’clock at night. The . natives set fire to their huts, burnt- their skins, and destroyed their provisions, not knowing tne use of them. They then tied their hands behind them, marched them to Looking Glass Bay, a distance: of more than a hundred and fifty miles. They had nothing to eat but roasted fish. They were then marched 200 miles to Sandy Bay, where they found a collection of savages, who carried them before their King and Queen. As soon as they arrived, their number, John Raw ter, of London, was ordered to be killed. He was tieu to a tree and struck on the head by two savages armed with clubs. His head was cut off, and the rest of. the body* they roasted in a kind of oven under ground, and offered to the survivors to eat ; and having nothing else they •; were forced by hunger to partake of it. They tied the remaining five to a tree, with 50 men to guard them. The next day James Webster was killed and roasted; the day after William Rawson, of New London, and the day after William Smith, of New York, shared the same fate.

The next day, from what they could learn from the Chief, James West, of New York, was to die; hut the night previous a heavy squall rose from the east, with thunder and rain, which so frightened the natives that they all ran away to the west, with a hideous noise, leaving the men tied under the tree. They succeeded in untying themselves, and escaped to the shore, found their boat, m which'they put to sea without provisions. They were not thirty yards from the shore when they saw 700 savages coming in search of them. They had been three days in the boat when they were picked up by the brig Margery, Captain White, of Sydney, New South Wales, at which place they were landed*on November 10.”