paid the price agreed on to the owner, another owner would come and
claim the land because his grandfather had been killed on it. He sat
down before the settler's house and waited for payment, and whether
he got any or not he came at regular intervals during the rest of his
life and sat down before the door with his spear and mere* by his
side waiting for more purchase money.

[Footnote] *Axe made of greenstone.

Some honest people in England heard of the good things to be had in
New Zealand, formed a company, and landed near the mouth of the
Hokianga River to form a settlement. The natives happened to be at
war, and were performing a war dance. The new company looked on
while the natives danced, and then all desire for land in New Zealand
faded from their hearts. They returned on board their ship and
sailed away, having wasted twenty thousand pounds. Such people
should remain in their native country. Your true rover, lay or
clerical, comes for something or other, and stays to get it, or dies.

After twenty years of labour, and an expenditure of two hundred
thousand pounds, the missionaries claimed only two thousand converts,
and these were Christians merely in name. In 1825 the Rev. Henry
Williams said the natives were as insensible to redemption as brutes,
and in 1829 the Methodists in England contemplated withdrawing their
establishment for want of success.

The Catholic Bishop Pompallier, with two priests, landed at Hokianga
on January 10th, 1838, and took up his residence at the house of an
Irish Catholic named Poynton, who was engaged in the timber trade.
Poynton was a truly religious man, who had been living for some time