Chap. VII. SELECTION OF LANDS. 185 
to the town. In the course of this work they struck 
at one spot upon a small vein of coal ; but this was not 
found worth working. Coal has since been put on 
board vessels in Massacre Bay at 10*. per ton, and 
sold in Nelson at from 27*. to 30*. 
The selection of the town-lands at Nelson took place 
while I was there. Mr. Thompson selected the Reserves 
for the natives. It seemed difficult to imagine whence 
the population could be brought, for whose benefit they 
were intended. A few natives were generally to be 
seen encamped near the shores of the lagoon ; but 
these were only visitors, who had come from a distance 
to sell their pigs and potatoes. The nearest inhabited 
native villages are Motuekay about fifteen miles to the 
west, and Tf^akapoaka, ten miles to the north of Nel- 
son. E Piko, the chief of Mutueha, had become almost 
a permanent resident since the White settlement had 
been formed. He was much attached to Captain 
Wakefield. 
I was forcibly struck by the strong colonizing cha- 
racter, if I may so speak, which distinguished the great 
majority of the leading settlers at Nelson. They 
seemed to have entered upon their noble task rather 
with a wish to share in doing good to their poorer 
fellow-colonists, than with selfish and interested views. 
A generous and active spirit of benevolence pervaded 
each thought, each feeling, and action. Most of them 
young men of superior education and intellect, they 
rejoiced in a state of things which allowed of the 
formation of society as it were anew, with the same 
complete materials as in the country from which they 
had come, but with those materials arranged in rela- 
tions less disheartening to the class who earn their 
bread by the sweat of their brow. 
And yet these mild youths, whose kind words could 
