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NEW ZEALAND COLONISED.

#1. Kororarika.#--All this fighting of the Maori tribes made them more
dependent on the trade they had with white men. They could neither make
guns nor powder for themselves, and the tribe that could purchase none
of the white man's weapons was sure to be slaughtered and eaten by other
tribes. Hence white men were more eagerly welcomed, and in course of
time nearly two hundred of them were living Maori fashion with the
tribes. But it was at the Bay of Islands that the chief trading was
carried on. For it was there that the kauri timber grew; it was there
that the pigs were most plentiful and the cargoes of flax most easily
obtained; and when a man named Turner set up a grog-shop on the shores
of the bay all the whaling ships made this their usual place for resting
and refitting. Behind the beach the hills rise steeply, and on these
hills a number of white men built themselves homes securely fenced, and
defended, sometimes even by a cannon or two. But down on the little
green flat next to the beach, rude houses were more numerous. In the
year 1838 there were about 500 persons resident in the little town,
which was now called Kororarika, but at times there were nearly double
that number of people resident in it for months together. A wild and
reckless place it was, for sailors reckoned themselves there to be
beyond the reach of English law.

At one time as many as thirty-six ships lay off the town of Kororarika,
and in a single year 150 ships visited the bay; generally staying a
month or more at anchor. The little church and the Catholic mission
station up on the hill did less good to the natives than these rough
sailors did harm, and at length the more respectable white men could
stand the disorder no longer. They formed an association to maintain
decency. They seized, tried, fined or sometimes locked up for a time the
worst offenders, and twice they stripped the ruffians naked, gave them a
coat of tar, stuck them all over with white down from a native plant,
and when they were thus decorated, expelled them from the town, with a
promise of the same treatment if ever they were seen back in it.

#2. Hokianga.#--Long before this the capacities of New Zealand and the
chances of making wealth there became well known in England, and in 1825
an association was formed to colonise the country. It sent out an agent,
who reported that Hokianga, a deep estuary on the west coast, just
opposite to Ko