io 4 2 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



from the sacking of Kororareka to the peace at Wanganui, the colony obtained compara- 

 tive repose. That is to say, the normal incidents of life in a new country inhabited by 

 two diverse races marked the time. Murders and alarms were but sporadic, and were 

 easily dealt with under the ordinary processes of the civil law. " Grim-visaged war had 

 smooth'd his wrinkled front," and for nearly thirteen years the country progressed and 

 prospered. Honours and rewards were distributed among the leading military officers and 

 friendly chiefs, Governor Grey was knighted the chiefs Tamati Waka Nene and Te 

 Puni acting as his squires at the ceremony pensioner settlements were formed in the 

 neighbourhood of Auckland, and the discharged soldiers who took up land in them were 

 formed into a corps called the " New Zealand Fencibles," so as to be ready to serve 

 their adopted country should the emergency ever again arise. A portion of the troops 

 finally left for England. The germs of future troubles had hardly begun to sprout, and 

 the time for garnering that deadly crop was yet far distant. Both trouble and danger 

 were incurred in the effort to bring the Maoris under the operation of the ordinary 

 British law, and to subordinate many of their traditional usages to European methods 

 of dispensing justice. Early in 1849, a native named Maroro was sentenced to a term 

 of four months' imprisonment in Wellington Gaol for robbery. This punishment carried 

 with it to the aboriginal mind indelible disgrace, and the prisoner meditated a terrible 

 revenge. Three days after his liberation he procured an axe, and repairing at night-fall 

 to the house of a settler named Pranks, near the Porirua Church, he murdered the 

 head of the household and two of his children, aged nine and two years respectively. 

 From the scene of the crime he returned to Wellington, and on being arrested at once 

 confessed his guilt. At his trial he explained that the bloody deed was committed solely 

 as utu, or retaliation, for his imprisonment, and upon being led out for execution he 

 met his fate with perfect indifference. In some instances the Maoris took the law into 

 their own hands, and tried and executed, in rude imitation of the procedure of 

 European tribunals, natives who had committed capital offences in their own settlements. 

 In 1851, an accidental circumstance in the streets of Auckland led nearly to an 

 open rupture between the two races. A Maori was arrested for petty larceny, and in 

 the course of a scuffle over the affair an inoffensive chief was knocked down by a 

 Maori policeman and carried off to the guard-house, whence he was released an hour 

 later. Furious at this unwarrantable insult, the chief hurried to his tribe and passionately 

 told how he had been struck to the earth and disgraced by a mere slave. Three 

 hundred armed natives in thirty-five war-canoes accompanied the insulted chief back to 

 Auckland, and landing in Mechanics' Bay, almost within a stone's-throw of Government 

 House, demanded that the offending native policeman should be given up to them. 

 The Authorities felt that to exhibit a spirit of irresolution in face of such a menace 

 would but serve to bring the law into contempt and invite disaster. A stern and 

 determined attitude was accordingly shown. The natives were told that if they did not 

 leave the town within two hours the guns of H.M.S. Fly and of Fort Britomart would 

 open fire upon them, and in the meantime the " P'encibles " marched in from Onehunga. 

 Overawed by the determination thus manifested, the Maoris wisely recognized that 

 discretion was the better part of valour, and therefore withdrew, and two days after- 

 wards, in order to prove that their intentions were peaceable, a number of the 



