ee ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. IV. 
always encouraged them to unabated industry in the 
field ; and their trade with the White peoj)le had caused 
them to be more cleanly and respectably dressed, and 
better supplied with the luxuries of civilized life, than 
most bodies of natives. I could have wished to see 
many English clergymen, endowed with the same 
worthiness of character, but with education to prevent 
the exaggeration of religion into absurdities, dispersed 
among the natives. Allowing for the ignorance which 
had led E Kai to carry religious feeling to a degree 
which appeared ridiculous to a sensible person, he was 
otherwise a model for many a White missionary. 
The strictness of his principles nearly led to a serious 
quarrel between him and my attendants, They were 
all " devils," or unconverted natives, and almost all of 
them of the Ngatipehi tribe, or closely connected with 
it. Among them were several of the young warriors 
who had been in the last war-party, and had remained 
attached to my establishment on the persuasion of their 
relative, one of E Kurus wives. E Kai and his fol- 
lowers had embraced the party of their brothers in the 
Church throughout the feud, although they had taken 
no share of the actual fighting. Knowing that my 
" boys" would not agree with the people in the pa, I 
had pitched my small tent on the river-bank, below 
the terrace where the village was situated, and had di- 
rected my attendants to light a fire and encamp around 
it. Mr. Niblett (a gentleman whom I had picked up 
at Pukihika, and who intended to join me in the trip) 
and I had lain down in the tent, and were dozing off 
to the monotonous tune of the native songs, with which 
they were beguiling the first hours of the night, accord- 
ing to their almost invariable custom. The opening 
of the tent showed the brawny forms of two or three 
of them, stripped to the waist and squatting round the 
