204 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. VII. 
whom he supplied with food and the labour of his 
slaves. 
Old Epuni had attached himself especially to Colo- 
nel Wakefield. The stores had been placed entirely 
under his care, of which he was not a little j)roud. 
He and his people were engaged on a good-sized house 
near the store-house for my uncle. Another Pitone 
man had built a house for me ; but as I was not sure 
of remaining very long, I had declined the honour of 
a residence of my own. I made the house, Maori re- 
tainer, and all, over to Dr. Dorset, who had taken 
shelter at first under the roof of an old friend of his, 
a passenger in the Aurora. 
A brisk northerly wind and rain continued from 
the evening of the 23rd to the morning of the 27th ; 
but the squatting still went on with great vigour. 
On the 26th, Captain Heale of the Aurora gave a 
farewell dinner on board to the principal settlers ; and 
I, among others, accepted his invitation. The bright 
hopes and good prospects of the young colony formed 
the subject of several animated speeches, and various 
sanguine conjectures were hazarded as to the future 
history of the New Zealand flag. 
, The rain continued, with but few intervals, till the 
1st of March, with a heavy south-east gale, which 
threw a heavy surf on to the beach, and tried the 
strength of several of the tent-ropes. 
During this time, I either wandered about among 
the squatters, or chatted with the natives at Pitone pa. 
Colonel Wakefield and I lived in a room, partitioned 
off from the large barn-like store, which faced the 
south-east, and was anything but warm during the 
gale, the only window being a piece of canvass, and the 
door a rickety and badly-fitted one from a ship-cabin, 
A large dresser along one side of this room, which was 
about eight feet broad and twenty long, served for 
