14 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. I. 
The natives about Wellington were becoming a 
useful and industrious race. Almost every settler 
had two or three attached to his establishment, who 
acquired some knowledge of the English language 
and of the useful arts. Many were building houses 
after the European fashion, and adopting European 
clothing ; they were learning the use and value of 
money, and the forms of commerce to a certain extent ; 
and some of them had acquired great decency, and 
even polish of deportment, by their constant and fami- 
liar intercourse with the colonists of all classes. It 
may be ^vorthy of note, that Epuni was building a 
wooden cottage with boarded floor, a door, and glass 
windows, in the pa of Pitone ; that his son, E Pf^are, 
acted as pilot to an emigrant ship, having boarded 
her outside the heads, in a whale-boat manned by his 
own countrymen, all dressed like English sailors, and 
brought her in to the anchorage in front of the 
town ; that E Tako and Richard Davis took to Eu- 
ropean clothing entirely, and that both had deposits at 
the bank ; while Davis had bought a horse for eighty 
pounds, which he used to let out, with saddle and bri- 
dle, at ten shillings a day ; and that the captain of the 
ship London, when half his European crew had de- 
serted the ship, found no difficulty in engaging eight 
native hands for the voyage to India and England. 
In the perfectly wild tribes, the high sense of honour 
and dignity among the chiefs, and their absolute poli- 
tical authority, served to maintain a certain integrity 
and straightforward conduct towards the stranger ; and 
those who had talents to acquire authority, had also, 
with but few exceptions, the will to exercise it with 
justice and kindness towards the White man by whom 
it was merited. . . • 
In the partly civilized tribes, which were at the 
same time converted, the political authority of the 
