202 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. VIII. 
fulfil both offices together with correctness. The 
eager Protector might with great ease be carried away 
by his natural prejudice in favour of the aborigines, if 
he did not positively misinterpret, at least to throw by 
his interpretation a shade over the evidence, favourable 
to their case. How much more might this be expected 
from an uneducated lad, who had shown by his un- 
deviating conduct during a month, that he imagined 
the protection of the aborigines to consist in impugning 
the statements and suspecting the intentions of the 
White men ? 
Accordingly, it was observed by more than one 
person, that when Mr. Clarke junior was cross-exa- 
mining a native witness, he would allow him to run on 
in the gossiping way of the Maori as long as his sUite- 
ment appeared to militate against the Company's case, 
but would confine him to a plain " Yes" or " No" 
when he seemed inclined to extend his answer in an 
opposite direction. 
The Court was conducted in a way intelligible only 
to lawyers. Quirks, quibbles, and knotty points of 
law, and decisions as to the manner of proceeding in 
the Court, made by the Commissioner after private 
deliberation and without reason assigned, made the 
affair as mysterious and perplexing to an ordinary 
person as though he had been hearing Small versus 
Attwood argued in the House of Lords. 
The first day was taken up by a dispute between 
the Counsel of the Company, Dr. Evans, and Mr. 
Hanson, the Crown Prosecutor, as to the precedence 
of the Company's claim or that of rival land-claimants 
which had been called on before it. Dr. Evans having 
conceded that the Company's case should first be heard, 
was called on to proceed with it. But Colonel Wake- 
field, not having authorized any such concession, 
