safety, that, instead of appearing on the field of battle, he appeared in the courts of law; having applied to the authorities there to have the warriors apprehended, and bound over to keep the peace. This request having been granted, they were seized at an unexpected moment, namely, when attending a ball given at the Cape; being anxious, no doubt, to have a little more of the dance of life, before engaging in the dance of death. Captain Cole, an English gentleman, one of the trustees I appointed on leaving New Zealand, who was in that ship, informed me that some of the passengers actually carried loaded pistols in their pockets during part of the voyage, to be ready in case of an assault; a melancholy picture of the frailty of human nature.

We arrived at Port Nicholson in 113 days from Greenock; and though, after landing, we were exposed for a time to the hardships almost inseparable from a new country, and to which I formerly alluded; yet, when I reflected on the exemplary order and propriety I had witnessed on board of the ship which had conducted us in safety to the promised land, and on the devotional exercises in which we had been daily engaged, when crossing the mighty deep, I could not help considering this a favourable omen of our future prosperity, and offering up a prayer to the almighty disposer of all events, that he would bless us in this the land wherein we had come to dwell, as it is written in the 26th chapter of Genesis, he blessed Isaac of old, "And the Lord appeared unto Isaac and said, go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee and will bless thee."

On first landing, I observed that I was rather more an object of attraction amongst the natives than most

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of my friends; and this, I afterwards discovered, arose from my size, as I then weighed fifteen stone, though the hot suns of Australia reduced me to thirteen within a twelvemonth afterwards. It was amusing to see the delight with which they gazed on me; and, when I walked along the beach, two of them, a young man and a young woman, insisted on accompanying me, and taking hold of my arm. Had I been twenty stone instead of fifteen, I actually believe they would have worshipped me as a deity. Previous to this I used sometimes to regret being so stout as I then was, but my New Zealand friends have thrown quite a new light upon the subject, and I readily bow to their authority, as they are well known to be people of taste in all matters of that sort. The Chinese, in like manner, consider those amongst the male sex the most handsome who are the most bulky, though they are no great admirers of fat women.

When searching for lodgings after leaving the vessel, I fortunately procured them in the hut or hotel of a countryman of my own, of the name of George Rose, from the county of Banff, in Scotland; who, in personal appearance, was a sort of giant, being six feet six in height.

George was living quietly in Sydney, when he got notice of the grand project of the colonization of New Zealand; and like a true Scotchman, never for one moment losing sight of the main chance, when he heard of lord's sons, and of baronet's sons, flocking there, he naturally considered that it would be a good field for his own operations, and that it was his duty to hasten to that land of promise, in order to do justice to himself by relieving the first settlers of every sixpence he could legitimately appropriate to his own

use, a praiseworthy act, no doubt, on his part. He had accordingly been there some months before us, in order that he might have a proper start.

When I waited on him, he received me very kindly, and told me that he would share with me what he had, and give me the best accommodation which his hotel afforded; though he confessed it was somewhat open, having neither door nor window, and admitting both wind and rain, and native dogs. He promised, however, to give me a whole bale of blankets to cover me at night, if I required them, as he had them for sale in his store, and they would be nothing the worse of it; and I daresay you will think that I was pretty well baled up, when I mention that I had no less than eight pair upon me, so that though the rain occasionally came through one or two of them, it never penetrated through the whole. George had neither a table nor a chair in his hotel; but as he kept a store, we converted an old tea-chest into a table, and an old soap-box into a chair; and one knife and fork served us both, as we used them alternately, or time about, as they say in Scotland. We contrived, however, to fare more sumptuously than most of our neighbours, and it arose from this, that in adition to mine host's numerous other callings of store-keeper, publican, auctioneer, boat-builder, boat-hirer, hotel-keeper, commission-agent, &c. he added what, in a new colony, is more important than them all, namely, a butcher. To be sure there were nothing but pigs then to be had in the "earthly paradise" of the far famed Mr. Montefiore; but by putting two or three pigs' heads into the pot at once, we had excellent Scotch broth every day, and George always treated me to a glass of brandy or hollands after dinner, in case the

strong pork of New Zealand should disagree with my delicate stomach; so that, upon the whole, I rather got fat under my worthy landlord's care. The only evil attending the butchering department of his extensive business, was that it attracted the native dogs during the night; as he brought whatever meat was unsold into the house, and the dogs crept through some of the holes in the hotel, in order to have a share of what was going. Instead, however, of blocking up the openings through which they entered, which he could have done in an hour, he had a loaded gun all night by his bed side, and kept up a sort of running fire upon them, which disturbed my sleep very much. I think he must have been a very bad marksman, as amidst all the platoons which he fired, I am not aware that a single individual amongst his uninvited guests suffered in the cause.

George had a young native, or Maori girl, for his housekeeper, whom he had engaged in some measure from necessity, and the necessity was this. When he first arrived, there were only five or six English at Port Nicholson, and one of the tribes politely waited upon him, and recommended him, for his own comfort as well as safety, to take one of their young women to live with him; and George, having a great dislike to the extremely ungentlemanly habit they had fallen into of eating people up, at once agreed to do so. This girl made the broth for us every day, and did all the work about the house; and a more quiet, inoffensive, hardworking, and obliging creature, I never saw. When any of her tribe happened to pass, they generally called to pay their respects to her, and George got potatoes from them at a cheap rate, which he generally contrived to sell to his more wealthy

customers at the extremely moderate profit of cent. per cent.

The honour of having discovered New Zealand belongs to Tasman, a celebrated Dutch navigator, who after discovering Van Diemen's Land, called also Tasmania after him, proceeded northward in search of wood and water; and on the 18th of December, 1642, stood in to a bay at the south west entry of Cook's Straits, now called Tasman's Gulf, where the settlement of Nelson has been lately placed. Instead however, of geting a supply of these useful and necessary articles, which, had he been allowed to land, he would have got in abundance, these being, in my opinion, the two staple commodities of that country, the boats he sent on shore were attacked by the natives, and four of his seamen killed, so that they were unable to land at all. He called the bay "Massacre Bay," in memory of his four unfortunate seamen, and the country Staaten Land, which was afterwards changed to Nova Zealandia, or New Zealand, Zealand being one of the provinces of Holland.

Captain Cook, accompanied by the celebrated Sir Joseph Banks, and Dr. Solander, landed at Poverty Bay, in New Zealand, on the 8th of October, 1769, and is said to have been the first European who ever set foot on these much dreaded shores. He afterwards circumnavigated and surveyed the whole of it, and took possession of it, with the usual formalities, on behalf of the king of Great Britain, as he considered it well adapted for a British colony, and recommended it for that purpose, though his recommendation led to no practical result. In the Parliamentary debates that took place about the year 1785, which led to the selection of Botany Bay for a penal