though the commissioners have only awarded him 5000 acres.

The Wesleyan missionaries are accused, on the other hand, of having urged the natives to get more payment (utu) for their land, and of having furnished them with a considerable quantity of gunpowder. All their interests moreover, are said to be identified with those of the natives, having none in common with the settlers; and, whilst the sincere members of that body are represented as dreading the approach of civilization, lest it should be accompanied by the views of old societies, the insincere, on the contrary, are said to tremble for the existence of their spiritual dominion or temporal advantages.

Whatever truth there may be in these allegations, it cannot be denied, that little more than two years before the late fatal catastrophe, a single missionary of that society, the Rev. Samuel Ironsides, passed over the straits to Cloudy Bay, and gathered around him 500 natives; and it is recorded in the 62d No. of the Wesleyan Missionary Notices for February, 1844, (page 454,) "that none of these Christian natives engaged in the fight at Wairoa; but Raurri Kingi Puaha, the principal chief of the station, went up to the excited English magistrate, when pointing in a threatening attitude to his armed attendants, and with nis New Testament open, said to him, 'Don't fight, don't fight, this book says it is wrong to fight; the land has become good through the missionaries, don't make it bad again." Colonel Wakefield also states, in one of his despatches to the Secretary of the Company in London, that when the conflict terminated, this same christian chief Puaha exerted himself to save the lives of the white prisoners, but unhappily

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in vain." A more striking testimony than this cannot well be paid to the effects of Christianity, though, unfortunately, it is but too rare.

An accurate account of this horrible massacre, originally drawn up by Mr. Domett, a member of the English bar, settled at Nelson, appears in the Supplement to the New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, published at Port Nicholson, on 2d September, 1843, of which I procured a copy.

The two chiefs who took the most prominent part in the massacre about to be related, were Rauperaha and Rangihaiata; the former one of the most influential, the latter one of the most ferocious of the chiefs of New Zealand, and called by Colonel Wakefield, Rauperaha's fighting general. Rauperaha is about sixty-five years of age, with Jewish features, an aquiline nose, and a cunning physiognomy; and both he and Rangihaiata are said to be addicted to drink. They both signed the treaty of Waitangi, by which their sovereign rights were surrendered to the Queen of Great Britain. Their tribe has resided latterly at Porirua and the neighbourhood, about fourteen miles north-west of Wellington. There they had, till of late, resisted all attempts of the settlers to occupy the land professed to have been purchased of the natives by the New Zealand Company, and had occasionally made aggressions upon the settlers on the Hutt, and driven them from their clearings.

The history of Rauperaha, who occasionally styles himself King of New Zealand, is perhaps the most eventful of any of the existing New Zealand chiefs. Driven, along with his numerous and powerful tribe, from his native district, Kafia, by the Waikato and Bay of Islands hosts, he seized, in his turn, upon all

the land on both sides of Cook's Straits, having come from Kafia as the fighting general of Tu-pahi; who having been killed at Otago by Tairoa, and the southern tribes, Rauperaha became chief of the tribe after this event. Tu-pahi was killed in a very cruel way, his enemies having tied him up by the heels to a tree, cut his throat, and then sucked his blood.

In order to revenge his death, Rauperaha engaged with the master of an English vessel, named Stewart, to carry him and 300 of his tribe, from Entry Island, Cook's Straits, to Otago, (though Mr. Montefiore says, in his evidence before the House of Lords, that it was to Bank's Peninsula,) under pretence of a trading voyage. When they anchored, the captain put all the men below, so as to make it appear that there were no men on board at all, on which a number of the natives from the shore came off in their canoes, who were mostly all seized; and at midnight, Rauperaha and his men landed, commenced battle, killed about fifty, and seized the great chief Mara Nui, who had killed Ecou's father twenty years before. Rauperaha and his tribe, after laying waste the settlement, and killing every man, woman, and child that came in their way, returned to Entry Island, carrying along with them the old chief, whom they made fast in the cabin by means of irons fastened round his legs, which, when removed, his legs were found to be in a state of mortification. He was despatched on landing at Entry Island, and his heart was cut into several pieces, to be sent as presents to the different tribes in alliance with Rauperaha. The Captain was tried at Sydney for murder, but was acquitted, and was soon afterwards washed overboard, near the Cape of Good Hope. It is said that one of the ship's cop

pers was made use of for cooking the bodies of those they had killed at Otago, so that Rauperaha and his tribe, on the the voyage back, had always a supply of fresh provisions, a thing much prized at sea.

Though, however, Rauperaha has been celebrated through life for his unscrupulous treachery, he possesses some points of character worthy of a chief amongst savages, being full of resources in cases of emergency, hardy in his enterprizes, and indefatigable in the execution of them.

This

In addition to the lands claimed by them and their tribes in the Northern Island, they laid claim also to a portion of the Southern Island, extending inward from Cloudy Bay, and including the Wairoa Plains, so called from a large river of that name which runs through them, admitting the passage of good sized vessels, sixty or seventy miles up its stream. river disembogues into that bay, about eighty miles from Nelson coastwise. The two chiefs had all along threatened to prevent the occupation of these plains, and Mr. Spain, one of the Land Commissioners of claims, agreed, in order to pacify them, when they attended a court which he held at Porirua, to meet them at Wairoa, as soon after the adjournment of his court, on the 18th of June, 1843, as possible.

Rauperaha laid claim to those plains by right of conquest, he and his tribe having conquered the Rhangatani and Nga-haituo tribes, about fifteen years ago. From the number of deserted pahs in that district, these tribes must, at one time, have been very numerous, so that great slaughter must have been committed. Indeed they were nearly extirpated, the few who escaped having fled to the bush, where they have since remained. The Wairoa Plains or Valley com

prise about 100,000 acres of level land, five or six hundred of which are covered with wood, and the remainder with fern, grass, or bulrush, though there are few traces of cultivation in any part of them.

In the meantime, the surveying party of the New Zealand Company had been employed during the whole month of May surveying these disputed grounds at Wairoa, meeting occasionally with some little interruption from a number of natives who had collected at the spot from different parts of Cook's Straits. Rauperaha and Rangihaiata, having heard of these surveys, resolved to put a stop to them; and an Englishman of the name of Thoms, undertook to convey them from Porirua and Mana, a small island in Cook's Straits, three miles in circumference, where they were residing, and land them in his schooner at Port Underwood, in Cloudy Bay, in the vicinity of the Wairoa plains. Thoms appears to have taken the part of the natives on this occasion from selfish motives, as he laid claim to some land at the Wairoa, and elsewhere, in right of a native woman with whom he had formerly cohabited, the daughter of Nohoroa, the brother of Rauperaha, by whom he has several children; and he was heard to say, when conveying the natives to the scene of action, “That his land was all right; that he should get it now." Thoms, after the death of his Maori wife, married a white woman belonging to Sydney. After Thoms had landed the chiefs with their tribes in his schooner, on 1st June, at Port Underwood; having the previous evening entertained them at a feast on board of his vessel, at which they all got drunk; they immediately embarked in eight canoes, and sailed a short distance up the Wairoa river, where they landed. They visited Mr. Cave, and other set