1024 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



under cultivation. The people of Taranaki considered they were straitened for room to 

 expand, and wanted an extension of territory towards the mouth of the River Waitara, 

 and an individual native was put forward to sell a portion of the tribal estate to the 

 Government. A Maori named Teira offered the Governor a block of land at Waitara for 

 sale ; it was some six hundred acres in extent, and endeared to the owners by historical 

 recollections, being the first landing-place of the tribe some twenty-five or thirty genera- 

 tions previously. Areas had consequently been allotted by their ancestors or the heads 

 of different families, and subdivided into allotments for different persons. Each allotment 

 was marked out by natural or artificial boundaries, and each family knew what belonged 

 to itself and what to others. The chief of Waitara, William King, acting as the repre- 

 sentative of the tribe, opposed the sale, telling the Governor personally that this land 

 should not be sold, but kept as an inheritance for the tribe. The Governor, however, 

 reported to the Secretary of State that while he did not fear that William King would 

 continue to maintain his assumed right, he had made every preparation to enforce obedience 

 should he presume to do so. William King did, however, maintain his right, and from 

 these events sprang the Taranaki War of 1860, which lingered until May, 1861, and 

 resulted in nothing except the temporary ruin of Taranaki. 



On the 23rcl of the month the Governor was informed that he would be superseded 

 by Sir George Grey, of whom the Secretary of State said, "he should be neglecting a 

 chance of averting a more general and disastrous war if he neglected to avail himself 

 of the remarkable authority which will attach to his name and character as Governor 

 of New Zealand." Sir George Grey landed at Auckland on the 26th of September, 

 1 86 1, and on the 3rd of October following Colonel Gore Browne left the colony. The 

 new Governor found the natives confident in their united strength of being able to cope 

 with the European settlers, as through the late conflict they had, by skilfully devised 

 retreats, almost uniformly succeeded in evading defeat, while the damage their warlike 

 and predatory habits inflicted on the settlers was of a most distressing kind. War to a 

 Maori was little more than an occasional interlude in his ordinary life, while to the 

 West of England men by whom the New Plymouth settlement was largely peopled, it 

 was a disruption of all their social and business relations. Nor would the Colonial Office 

 regard with any satisfaction the cost of the conflict, which Sir George Grey found to 

 have . amounted to eighty-seven thousand pounds. The Duke of Newcastle became accus- 

 tomed to write of the conflict as the "Settlers' \Var." One good result of the change 

 of Governors made itself apparent. Colonel Browne had directed that preparation should 

 be made for commencing a war against the Waikato tribes, who had, from their inter- 

 course with the settlers, acquired a general coating of civilization. They had schools 

 and school-masters, places of worship and religious teachers, fenced and tilled lands, and 

 agricultural implements and appliances diffused over a wide area. Sir George Grey, who 

 had been charged some fifteen years .before with carrying the spirit of peace into 

 the councils of war, now considered it wiser to establish peace and order than to carry 

 slaughter into such districts. 



The Stafford Ministry .had fallen in July, 1861, and was succeeded by an Adminis- 

 tration formed by Mr. Fox, who had been an employe of the New Zealand Company, 

 and an active agent in the agitation that was fostered among the colonists to promote 



