Chap. VIII. PUBLIC MEETING. ' 211 
})erjury was reported by an idler very much in want 
of employment, who had wasted an hour or two on the 
deserted benches of the wooden house in which the 
Court was held. 
For the public had long got weary of listening to 
the same dull questions and answers. During the first 
week, the Court had been crowded with spectators, 
both native and European ; but after that, scarcely any 
one attended, except the people who were paid for their 
attendance, to whom it was a very profitable employ- 
ment, and the witness. Dull rumours sometimes 
reached the public that 3Ioiki (" Moses ") or Apera- 
hama ('* Abraham"), or some other unknown native 
of Te Aro with a missionary name, had been giving 
his evidence for three days ; and people wondered what 
his evidence could have to do with the affair. At 
length, the only knowledge that the Court was still 
going on was gathered from seeing Mr. Clarke junior 
and Mr. Campbell, the Surveyor of the Court, hunting 
about in couples from one Maori -pa to the other, in the 
morning and afternoon, and the Commissioner's Clerk 
swaggering about the beach by himself, to the great 
delight of the loitering Maori children and dogs. 
Early in June, one of the usual public meetings had 
expressed a very strong feeling of the injury which 
would arise to the settlement from the delay apparently 
inevitable should the Court continue its proceedings 
in the same manner as during the first few weeks. 
But the Court sat on, without hurrying, as though 
to show that it cared no more for public meetings than 
did any other of the institutions in New Zealand 
which were worked by the local Government so as to 
injure the settlers. 
Two or three articles, commenting on the dilatory 
progress of the Commission, and the incompatibility of 
p 2 
