460 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



whose spears and meres were a very inadequate defence against 

 the firearms of their assaihints. Every pa that was attacked 

 was taken with great slaughter, and the survivors, to the 

 number of many hundreds, were carried off as slaves. There 

 was great consternation throughout the district, and numbers 

 of the people hid themselves away in their mountain fast- 

 nesses until their much-dreaded invaders had departed. The 

 southernmost pa taken by the Ngapuhi was only about five 

 miles distant from Tokoanaru, and from this point they re- 

 traced their steps and returned home. Pomare likewise came 

 as far south as Tokomaru, but he treated all the people to the 

 south of the East Cape as friends, and formed a matrimonial 

 alliance with them, taking as his wife Te Eangiipaia, daughter 

 of Te Porioterangi. Rutherford mentions Pomare as being 

 near the East Cape, on his way home, when he and his friends 

 returned from their visit to Taranaki ; but of Hongi's invasion 

 he does not say a word. And yet, of all the events which dis- 

 turbed the monotony of everyday life during those ten years, 

 there could have been nothing to be compared with this. It 

 is impossible that any one who was w'ell acquainted with the 

 circumstances of the district at the period in question should, 

 in relating the principal occurrences of those years, pass over 

 such a calamity as this without the slightest allusion. 



The last event of importance in Eutherford's narrative is 

 the expedition to Kaipara to take part in the war with Hongi ; 

 but the natives of the part of the country from which this ex- 

 pedition is said to have started have no knowledge whatever 

 of anytliing of the kind. The account, too, which he gives of 

 the battle makes it very doubtful (to say the least) whether 

 he was present at it, as he represents himself to have been ; 

 for he gives the victory to the wrong side. The Kaipara people 

 and their friends, who were opposed to Hongi, were successful 

 in the early part of the engagement, brrt were afterwards 

 beaten with great slaughter, and fled to Waikato, whither 

 Hongi followed them to avenge the death of his son." 



A close examination of the whole narrative leads very 

 decidedly to the conclusion that Eutherford's account of hi% 

 personal adventures is a mere romance ; that he knew no- 

 thing of the locality in which he professes to have resided 

 nearly ten years, beyond the name of Tokomaru ; and that, 

 whether the years which he spent in New Zealand were many 

 or few, they were spent in the north, somewhere in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Bay of Islands. 



But what, it may be asked, could be the object of such a 

 fabrication ? To this question I can only suggest a possible 



* For the particulars of this battle, and its results, see the " Life of 

 Henry Williams," by Hugh Carleton, vol. i., p. 64, note. 



