8 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chav. I. 
sportsman, and well skilled in pig-hunting. He took 
great pride in my excellent dogs ; and also in beating 
me, which he generally did from his superior activity 
and knowledge of the country. I have often Ijeen 
completely thrown behind, and lost my way among 
some of the wooded hollows into which we have 
descended from the open table-lands; and when I at 
length found my way to the river, and got home an 
hour or two after dark, dead-beat and faint with 
hunger, having been afoot since my breakfast at sun- 
rise, I would find E Kuru smoking his pipe after a 
comfortable meal, swelling with triumph at having 
returned some hours before, with two or three fine 
pork a. 
I found that the settlers had to complain more and 
more of the annoying conduct of a great num})er of 
the natives. The surveyors were more often stopped 
in their work by ])arties, chiefly from Putikiwaranuiy 
but almost invariably mihanere. This continued at 
still more frequent intervals after Messrs. Thomas and 
Carrington, who were delayed for some time at 
JVaikanae by a circumstance which I shall have to 
notice hereafter, had returned to complete the survey. 
The influences which cjiused this interference were 
not difficult to discover. Indeed, no great pains were 
taken to conceal their origin. 
Mr. Bell had arrived in sjifety with his cattle, after 
sonie difficulty in crossing the quicksands of the Tura- 
kina and IVun^aihu, Having an early choice, he had 
obtfiined from those before him an engagement not to 
choose the land on which he should set to work, and 
j)repared to plant himself on a sj)ot, which the sur- 
veyors told him was outside a public reserve, made 
with some view to a town, if allowed by the Company 
in England on certain conditions. This was in a 
valley, about two miles back from the pa where Mr. 
