S8 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. II. 
Rauperaha had succeeded in driving them away, and 
establishing some of his relations in Port Underwood 
or TVanganui, the ship-harbour of Cloudy Bay. Thus 
it seemed plain that, even with regard to the owner- 
ship of their villages and potato-gardens, might con- 
stituted the only right. As to the parts lying waste, 
we collected that they were not thought of or claimed 
by any one. Many White men had cleared and culti- 
vated patches of land without bargain or interruption. 
These natives had not, like those in the neighbourhood 
of the Bay of Islands, learned that White men were 
willing to pay a high price for desert land ; and there 
did not seem to have ever been any written bargain for 
land before our arrival. We had become aware, from 
the evidence of missionaries given before a Committee of 
the House of Lords in 1838, that a very different state of 
things prevailed in the northern part of the islands ; 
but it was to be remembered that there, so early as 
1814, Mr. Marsden, the founder of the Church Mission, 
had brought a formal deed from Sydney, in order to 
complete an agreement for the land on which the Mis- 
sion buildings were to stand ; and that, since that time, 
numerous similar purchases on a large scale had been 
made by the missionaries as well as by lay settlers, who 
created a considerable demand for land in that portion 
of the country. Dicky told us plainly, that our wish 
to purchase a large district of waste land would be 
looked upon as a novelty by the natives here. From 
the information which we gathered from him and other 
persons, I feel convinced that a large body of settlers 
might have pitched their tents in many parts of the 
neighbourhood entirely without interruption, and with- 
out being regarded by the natives as intruders on their 
rights. 
As, however, we did not propose to take possession 
