«?4 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. IX. 
Hobson, after his arrival in January, had been to ac- 
quire some territory over which he might extend his 
dominion. He had accordingly assembled some two 
hundred natives living at or near the Bay, and about 
one hundred Europeans, including missionaries and 
officers of his suite ; and had proceeded to ask the 
chiefs, through Mr. Williams as interpreter, to give 
the Queen the power to protect and restrain them. 
And a document had been read and interpreted to 
them; which, after a good deal of hesitation and 
opposition, thirty or forty chiefs had signed on the 
next day. We understood that by this document the 
chiefs had ceded their sovereignty to the Queen of 
England ; but we remained in ignorance of any of its 
other provisions. 
Now it just oozed out, that Mr. Williams was 
charged to procure the assent of the chiefs in Cook's 
Strait to a similar cession of their sovereignty, in order 
to make the document a secure foundation on which 
to build the assumption of the sovereignty by the 
English Crown. Although Mr. Williams's negoti- 
ations with the chiefs of Port Nicholson for this pur- 
pose were conducted with great privacy and mystery, 
of course they had constantly reported the proceedings 
to Colonel Wakefield ; who had yet been, for a long 
time, unable to discover what they were required to 
sign. 
Another negotiation, however, had employed a con- 
siderable part of the Reverend Mr. Williams's time. 
He had communicated to Colonel Wakefield his claim, 
in the name of Richard Davis, the native teacher, to 
about sixty acres of land in the best part of Thorndon, 
where the town was about to be built. On investiga- 
tion and inquiry. Colonel Wakefield found this claim 
to be totally without foundation. Subsequently, in the 
