But the cause was to be found in the too great indulgence in
the use of spirituous liquors which had been obtained among them for a
considerable time past. The different capital crimes which had lately
been brought before the court of criminal judicature, together with the
various petty offences that daily came under the cognisance of the
magistrates, did not proceed from an insufficiency either of food or
clothing; but from an inordinate desire of possessing, by any means
whatsoever, those articles with which they might be able to procure
spirits, 'that source--as the governor expressed himself in an order
which he published directly after these executions--that source of the
misfortunes of all those whom the laws of their country, and the justice
that was due to others, had launched into eternity, surrounded with the
crimes of an ill-spent life.'
The court having ordered that Francis Morgan should be hung in chains
upon the small island which is situated in the middle of the harbour, and
named by the natives Mat-te-wan-ye, a gibbet was accordingly erected, and
he was hung there, exhibiting an object of much greater terror to the
natives, than to the white people, many of whom were more inclined to
make a jest of it; but to the natives his appearance was so
frightful--his clothes shaking in the wind, and the creaking of his
irons, added to their superstitious ideas of ghosts (for these children
of ignorance imagined that, like a ghost, this man might have the power
of taking hold of them by the throat), all rendering him such an alarming
object to them--that they never trusted themselves near him, nor the spot
on which he hung; which, until this time, had ever been with them a
favourite place of resort.
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