^ ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. I. 
the sobriquet of " Coffee," to the big post in the middle 
of the house, with my dog-chains, for theft ; intending 
to send him to Wellington in a schooner, which was 
to sail the next morning. But he proved to me that 
I did not understand thief-taking, or at any rate thief- 
keeping; for he slipped his irons in the night, and 
started to the northward. I Jifterwards heard that he 
was a deserter from the detachment of troops at Auck- 
land, and an accomplice of " Mickey Knight" and his 
friend, in their robberies in that part of the country. 
I had another rather serious instance of the disad- 
vantages of being without law. Three or four loose 
characters, who had arrived from England in the Lon- 
don, kept the licensed grog-shop which was near my 
house, and encouraged all kinds of ruffians, as a kind of 
feudal retinue, by liberal distributions of spirits. It was 
frequently hinted to me that they salted down a great 
many more pigs than they ever bought from the 
natives, or turned out with their brand. My dog had 
got so fond of the sport, that he would follow any one 
who held up a rope to him as a sign that they were 
going to catch a pig ; and many of the large hogs were 
not to be caught by inferior dogs. I detected my 
neighbours of the grog-shop hunting and killing my 
pigs as coolly as if they had been their own ; and one 
morning one of the members of the worthy firm came 
and enticed my dog for the purpose of doing it with 
more gusto. As soon as I found this out, I went down 
to the grog-shop, where the hunting-party were con- 
soling themselves with copious draughts of gin for their 
sorrow at having been deprived of two large pigs bearing 
my brand by my agent, who had caught them in the 
fact. I entered into the joke, and cheerfully Ijegged 
that the innocent amusement of robbing me might now 
cease, as the pleasant excitement of doing it without my 
