200 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. VUI. 
During nearly ten months which had elapsed since 
that postponement of the question, the opinions of the 
natives as to their rights to land, and as to its value to 
them, had augmented still more than during the two 
years between the purchases and Captain Hobson's 
postponement of their consideration. The mission- 
aries, the rival land-claimants, and other interested 
and prejudiced persons, had not only, like Mr. Clarke 
in his letter, taught the natives to refuse to yield, or to 
insist on increased payment for those lands which they 
had fairly occupied at the time of the original pur- 
chase ; but, backed by the authority of the so-called 
Treaty and the opinion of the Governor, they had 
taught them to believe in rights which they had ig- 
nored before. They had encouraged men to start 
forward as claimants for compensation who hardly 
hazarded an opinion at the time of our original deal- 
ings with them, but who no longer feared the absolute 
authority of their chiefs, now destroyed or nullified by 
the democratic spirit of the missionary teaching or 
the influence of European laws and customs. And 
they had taught all, modern as well as ancient owners 
of the soil, to extend over the waste and uninhabited 
land, rights and claims which had never before entered 
their thoughts. 
At the time of our purchases, the ownership of any 
land not yet occupied accrued to the first occupier. 
The very act of occupation of some sort alone gave a 
title according to the native customs at that time ; and 
the act of thus acquiring a title by occupation to any 
of the hitherto unappropriated land, if forbidden by a 
mightier man or tribe who had the same intention, 
remained undone by the weaker party. In like man- 
ner, when we first arrived in Cook's Strait, the right 
of disposing of what was fairly occupied by the tril>e. 
