50 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND, Chap. UI. 
the Protector had no great scruples as to exaggerating 
and improving upon these complaints, when they could 
be made to militate against the settlers or the officers 
of the Company. 
The natives of T'e Aro, who, it will be remembered, 
had first openly interfered with the occupation by the 
settlers of any land, had become much more discontented 
and distant towards the settlers since the arrival of the 
Wesleyan missionary among them. About four acres 
of land on which their pa stood, near the beach of the 
harbour, had been laid out as a public wharf and 
reserve for the site of a custom-house, and two private 
sections ; but they had been unwilling for a long 
while to remove from the place. Colonel Wakefield 
had been more than once on the point of getting them 
to migrate to a block of 38 acres of native reserve, 
which included some of their fiivourite potato-gardens, 
about half a mile from the pa. But, after willingly 
accepting his offer of a sum of money or amount of goods 
as an inducement to the removal in the afternoon, they 
would frequently change their minds suddenly, and 
behave in the morning in so sullen and repulsive a 
manner that it was evident some sinister influence 
had been at work. It soon crept out, for they are not 
clever at keeping a secret, that Mr. Aldred constantly 
advised them, and on the most unworthy grounds, never 
to leave their pa. 
Thus the missionaries destroyed the chieftainship, 
one of the native institutions most worthy of preser- 
vation, and supported the preservation of the filthy and 
unwholesome pas ; though a change which should 
aifiect the manner in which the Maories lived was 
perhaps the one most to be desired, and the one most 
easy to be effected by gradual and harmless degrees. 
The Governor, attended by Colonel Wakefield and 
