e; and accordingly,
in 1839, Octavius Hadfield, afterwards primate, took his life in his
hand and his post at a spot on the mainland opposite to the elder
Rauparaha's island den of rapine. By 1840 the Maoris, if they had
not beaten their spears into pruning hooks, had more than one old
gun-barrel hung up at the gable-end of a meeting-house to serve when
beaten upon as a gong for church-goers.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Taylor's _New Zealand, Past and Present_.]

By this time there were in the islands perhaps two thousand Whites,
made up of four classes--first, the missionaries; second, the _Pakeha_
Maoris; third, the whalers and sealers chiefly found in the South
Island; and fourth, the traders and nondescripts settled in the Bay
of Islands. Of the last-named beautiful haven it was truly said that
every prospect pleased, that only man was vile, and that he was
very vile indeed. On one of its beaches, Kororareka--now called
Russell--formed a sort of Alsatia. As many as a thousand Whites lived
there at times. On one occasion thirty-five large whaling ships were
counted as they lay off its beach in the bay. The crews of these found
among the rum-shops and Maori houris of Kororareka a veritable South
Sea Island paradise. The Maori chiefs of the neighbourhood shared
their orgies, pandered to their vices, and grew rich thereby. An
occasional murder reminded the Whites that Maori forbearance was
limited.

But even Kororareka drew the line. In 1827 a brig, the _Wellington_,
arrived in the bay in the hands of a gang of convicts, who had
preferred the chances of mutiny to the certainties of Norfolk Island.
Forthwith Alsatia was up in arms for society and a triple alliance
of missionaries, whalers, and cannibals combined to intercept the
runaways. The ship's guns of the whalers drove the convicts to take
refuge on shore, where the Maoris promptly secured them. The captives
were duly sent to their fate in Sydney, and the services of the New
Zealanders gratefully requited by a payment at the rate of a musket
per convict.

Alsatia had its civil wars. In 1831 a whaling-captain deserted the
daughter of a chief in the neighbourhood in order to take to himself
another chief's daughter, also of a tribe by the Bay. The tribe of the
deserted woman attacked that of the favoured damsel. A village was
burnt, a benevolent mediator shot, and a hundred lives lost. Only the
arrival on the scene of Marsden, on one of his visits to the country,
rest