Chap. VIII. MISSIONARY CALUMNIES. 251 
scribed, to which his audience seemed to listen with 
great respect, as though forming part of the new 
creed ; althougK I am sure that they could not under- 
stand them, and have great doubts whether even the 
declaimer was aware of their signification. 
On inquiring from my attendants who the orator 
was, they told me he was a returned slave from the 
Bay of Islands, and had been left as teacher by Te 
TViremu, or Williams. They also told me, that the 
Ngarauru tribe, who inhabit this valley, were a tutua, 
or inferior tribe, who had no chiefs ; and that thus Te 
Aro Aro, or " the Body," as the slave teacher was 
called, ruled them as he listed. I therefore took no 
notice of his virulent attack ; but after making friends 
with some of my neighbours by desultory conversation 
on other subjects, and by playing with their children, 
made my bed, and covered myself up as though to 
sleep. 
This marked indifference to his eloquence soon 
stopped Aro Aro ; but some of my companions did not 
fail to take up the cudgels for me, and there ensued a 
stormy discussion, by which I was occasionally half 
waked, to see the figure of my assailant gesticulating 
from the high pulpit, his malignant features seeming 
more repulsive in the half-dreaming glances which I 
thus obtained. 
In the morning I strolled about the citadel, and 
gazed with pleasure on the fertile country around. 
The river meanders through the valley down to its 
embouchure among the sand-hills on the coast about 
four miles off. The sides of the valley, approaching 
steeply to its bank about two miles above the j9a, close 
it in from the sight in that direction. The valley 
varies in width from one to three miles, and extensive 
table-lands appear to stretch away from the top of the 
