e creaking
wheels of some passing dray. Then it is pleasant to remember that
Rauparaha's son became a missionary amongst the tribes which his
father had harried, and that it is now nearly a generation since Maori
blood was shed in conflict on New Zealand soil.

Chapter VIII

"A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS"

"Under his office treason was no crime;
The sons of Belial had a glorious time."
_Dryden_.

Between 1830 and 1840, then, New Zealand had drifted into a new phase
of existence. Instead of being an unknown land, peopled by ferocious
cannibals, to whose shores ship-captains gave as wide a berth as
possible, she was now a country with a white element and a constant
trade. Missionaries were labouring, not only along the coasts, but in
many districts of the interior, and, as the decade neared its end, a
large minority of the natives were being brought under the influence
of Christianity. The tribal wars were dying down. Partly, this was a
peace of exhaustion, in some districts of solitude; partly, it was
the outcome of the havoc wrought by the musket, and the growing fear
thereof. Nearly all the tribes had now obtained firearms. A war had
ceased to be an agreeable shooting-party for some one chief with an
unfair advantage over his rivals. A balance of power, or at any
rate an equality of risk, made for peace. But it would be unjust
to overlook the missionaries' share in bringing about comparative
tranquillity. Throughout all the wars of the musket, and the dread
slaughter and confusion they brought about, most of the teachers held
on. They laboured for peace, and at length those to whom they spoke
began to cease to make themselves ready unto the battle. In the worst
of times no missionary's life was taken. The Wesleyans at Whangaroa
did indeed, in 1827, lose all but life. But the sack of their station
was but an instance of the law of _Muru_. Missionaries were then
regarded as Hongi's dependants. When he was wounded they were
plundered, as he himself was more than once when misfortune befel
him. In the wars of Te Waharoa, the mission-stations of Rotorua and
Matamata were stripped, but no blood was shed. The Wesleyans set up
again at Hokianga. Everywhere the teachers were allowed to preach, to
intercede, to protest. At last, in 1838, the extraordinary spectacle
was seen of Rauparaha's son going from Kapiti to the Bay of Islands to
beg that a teacher might come to his father's trib