48 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. III. 
the pas, and holding much private talk w ith the dis- 
contented among the natives. He seemed to become a 
part and parcel of the Pipitea and Te Aro villages, 
though not one of the settlers even knew who he was. 
Some presents of blankets from the Government 
were handed by JNIr. Clarke to the people of those 
villages, for distribution to the aboriginal population ; 
but Epuni, Wa report, and several other chiefs of rank, 
refused to accept the donation through their hands, 
having received no sort of attention, or acknowledg- 
ment of their higher station from any of the official 
troop. Thus the door of Barrett's hotel was daily 
surrounded by the chiefs who had been of minor in- 
fluence at the time of our first arrival, but whose im- 
mediate residence happened to be in the town, while the 
real chiefs held no communication with the Governor. 
And the settlers were hurt to see this tacit offence put 
by authority upon the dignity of those whom they had 
hitherto thought it advisable to honour and respect, as 
the worthy and influential leaders of the native tribes.* 
* The Reverend Montague Hawtrey, whom I have already de- 
scribed as the essayist, in 1837, who had embodied in writing the 
views of the Association towards the natives, never ceased to feel a 
warm interest in the prosecution of those views. He wrote, in 
1840, An Earnest Address to New Zealand Colonists with refer- 
ence to their Intercourse with the Native Inhabitants; and the colo- 
nists cordially concurred in his philanthropic suggestions. In this 
paper Mr. Hawtrey says : — " The matter at which I look witli 
" the deepest anxiety is your treatment of the native chiefs. Upon 
" this point your success or failure, as regards the aborigines, 
" appears to me to depend. Not only justice to themselves, but a 
•' respect for the national importance of the New Zealand people, 
" requires that the chiefs should continue to occupy as high a rela- 
" tive position after your settlement among them as before. 
" I fear that this important point has not been sufficiently 
" attended to by the Missionaries, and that the course of things at 
" present going forward in New Zealand, is to depress the chiefs to 
