250 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. VIII. 
rather offended at their reception, but sat in silence, 
with their bhinkets or mats raised nearly up to their 
eyes. After some little consultation among the inha- 
bitants, whose number continued gradually to increase, 
and much whispering and mystery, we were shown 
into a large building used as a chapel by the natives, 
who had been all converted very recently. A large 
fire was lighted in the centre of the house, so as to 
illumine every part of it ; and while we partook of some 
food which was placed before us, the whole population 
of the village, amounting to perhaps 100 of all ages 
and sexes, walked in and took their places. A native 
teacher performed prayers as soon as our food-baskets 
were removed ; and then entered upon a long Philip- 
pic against me and mine. 
I began now to understand the unusual distrust and 
want of friendliness shown by the inhabitants of this 
village. The preacher, for he remained in the wooden 
pulpit from which he had read prayers while delivering 
his oration, spoke for an hour in the most cruel way of 
me, of Colonel Wakefield, and of the intentions of the 
White settlers who had followed us. He insisted upon 
the old story, so widely spread about to our damage, 
that we were come to buy all their land and drive 
them to the mountains ; that we were Pikapo, or Ro- 
man Catholics, and therefore sure to cut their throat-s. 
He repeatedly warned them against me in particular, as 
come to spy the fulness of their land ; and mixed all 
this up with quotations from the Scriptures, whether 
apt or not, and digressions to discuss some abstruse 
point of religious doctrine, so that he might have 
passed for an inspired priest fulminating the edicts of 
the Church against some heretic or tempter of the peo- 
ple. The discourse, too, was interlarded with words 
of mihanere manufacture, such as I have before de- 
