The influx of
Europeans has caused a competition in trading, which enables them to
get the highest value for the produce of their labour, and at the same
time has opened to them a hundred new lines of industry, and afforded
them other opportunities of becoming possessed of property. They have
not at all improved these advantages as they might have done; but are,
nevertheless, as it were in spite of themselves, on the whole,
richer--_i.e._, better clothed, fed, and in some degree lodged, than in
past years; and I see the plough now running where I once saw the rude
pointed stick poking the ground. I do not, however, believe that this
improvement exists in more than one or two districts in any remarkable
degree, nor do I think it will be permanent where it does exist;
insomuch as I have said that the improvement is not the result of
providence, economy, or industry, but of a train of temporary
circumstances favourable to the natives: and which, if unimproved, as
they most probably will be, will end in no permanent good result.

CHAPTER XIV.

Trading in the Old Times.--The Native Difficulty.--Virtue its own
Reward.--Rule, Britannia.--Death of my Chief.--His Dying Speech.
--Rescue.--How the World goes round.

From the years 1822 to 1826, the vessels trading for flax had, when at
anchor, boarding nettings up to the tops; all the crew were armed, and,
as a standing rule, not more than five natives, on any pretence,
allowed on board at one time. Trading for flax in those days was to be
undertaken by a man who had his wits about him; and an old flax trader
of those days, with his 150 ton schooner "out of Sydney," cruising all
round the coast of New Zealand, picking up his five tons at one port,
ten at another, twenty at another, and so on, had questions, commercial,
diplomatic, and military, to solve every day, that would drive all
the "native department," with the minister at their head, clean out of
their senses.

Talk to me of the "native difficulty"--pooh! I think it was in 1822
that an old friend of mine bought, at Kawhia, a woman who was just
going to be baked. He gave a cartridge-box full of cartridges for her;
which was a great deal more than she was really worth: but humanity
does not stick at trifles. He took her back to her friends at Taranaki,
whence she had been taken, and her friends there gave him at once two
tons of flax and eighteen pigs, and asked him to remain a few days
longer till t