*J52 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. X. 
raged the natives to remain in disputed spots, and to 
dispute other spots which they would not occupy, that 
there was little to be done. In hiring a Native Reserve 
from the Trustees, you might now very probably be ex- 
pelled. Trustee and all, by one of the wards of the trust 
and his uplifted tomahawk. So this property, which 
had been put in Chancery while it might have been 
made useful, was rendered, when released, compara- 
tively valueless by the delay itself. 
Except at Nelson, and of this I shall speak presently, 
nothing more was effected by the new trust. 
And in due time, at the end of the year 1843, Mr. 
Clarke, the Chief Protector of the Aborigines, thus 
tolled the death-knell of the Reserves, in his Official 
Report to Mr. Shortland : — 
" The majority of the Native Reserves at Wellington 
** have been so partially selected as to render them unfit 
" for cultivation and ineligible for leasing, in order to 
** realize for their " (the natives') " subsistence, or for 
" the amelioration of their moral or physical condition, 
" as it must be remembered that the allotments having 
" water frontages, marked on the Company's plan of 
*' Wellington as reserves, are mostly native pus, or 
" spots at present inhabited by natives, and which, as 
" they were never alienated, are not in the power of 
•* the Trustees, although nominated and marked Native 
" Reserves on the chart ; in consequence, the Trustees 
" of the Native Reserve Fund have not yet been able to 
" raise sufficient means to procure medical comforts for 
*' the sick, the sum total of assets at Wellington being 
" 67/. 10*. Whether Mr. Halswell, the gentleman 
*' appointed by the Company to look after these Reserves 
" and apply the funds raised from them to their legiti- 
" mat« uses prior to Her Majesty's Government assum- 
** ing this tfusti met with better success, I cannot say. 
