ister suggestion of a Yankee
whaling-skipper. H.M.S. _Alligator_ signalised the hoisting of the
ensign with a salute of twenty-one guns. After this impressive
solemnity, Mr. Busby lived at the bay for six years. His career was a
prolonged burlesque--a farce without laughter, played by a dull
actor in serious earnest. Personally he went through as strange an
experience as has often fallen to the lot of a British official. A man
of genius might possibly have managed the inhabitants of his Alsatia.
But governments have no right to expect genius in unsupported
officials--even when they pay them L300 a year. Mr. Busby was a
well-meaning, small-minded person, anxious to justify his appointment.
His Alsatians did not like him, and complained that his manners were
exclusive and his wit caustic. Probably this meant nothing more than
that he declined to join in their drinking-bouts. His life, however,
had its own excitements. A chief whom he had offended tried to shoot
him. Crouching one night in the verandah of the resident's cottage,
he fired at the shadow of Mr. Busby's head as it appeared on the
window-blind. As he merely hit the shadow, not the substance, the
would-be assassin was not punished, but the better disposed Maoris
gave a piece of land as compensation--not to the injured Busby, but to
his Government.

It has been well said of Mr. Busby that "his office resembled a
didactic dispatch; it sounded well, and it did nothing else."
Nevertheless, New Zealand was in a state such that, from time to time,
even the English Government had to do something, so urgent was the
need for action. After despatching their man-of-war without guns, they
next year sent a man-of-war with guns. Nor did the captain of the
_Alligator_ confine himself to the harmless nonsense of saluting
national flags. In 1834 the brig _Harriet_ was wrecked on the coast of
Taranaki. Her master, Guard, an ex-convict, made his way to Sydney,
asserting that the Maoris had flocked down after the wreck, and
attacked and plundered the crew; had killed some, and held Guard's
wife and children in captivity. As a matter of fact, it was the
misconduct of his own men which had brought on the fighting, and even
to his Sydney hearers it was obvious that his tale was not wholly
true. But the main facts were correct. There had been a wreck and
plunder; there were captives. The _Alligator_ was at once sent with
soldiers to the scene of the disaster to effect the rescue of th