Chap. XIV. THE LAND COMMISSIONER AT PETRE. 341 
Surveyors of the Company, on his way to TVanganui 
to assist the Commissioner's Court with the necessary 
plans and maps. 
We reached JVanganui safely on the evening of 
Sunday the 17th of April. I wrote a note at once to 
the Commissioner to apprise him of my arrival. 
But I found that Mr. Spain had got impatient at 
the delay in the arrival of either Colonel Wakefield 
or myself; had held his Court and closed it, after 
three days' examination of witnesses ; and was about to 
return to Wellington the next morning. 
I also heard that E Kuru had begged that no inves- 
tigation might take place until all the parties to the 
sale were present ; and had gone up to Tata, and some 
other places as far as 150 miles up the river, to collect 
many of the chiefs who had signed the deed of the 
Company. I immediately despatched a canoe with 
two boys to hasten his movements ; and begged Mr. 
Spain to postpone his departure, as I found, on availing 
myself of his permission to peruse the evidence taken, 
that it entirely consisted of that of repudiators, and was 
for the most part a tissue of falsehoods. Some denied 
having signed at all ; some said that E Kuru had taken 
all the goods ; some that they were porangi, or foolish^ 
when they signed ; and others that the pigs and pota- 
toes which were given to me after the sale as a present, 
and for which I had immediately paid out of my pri- 
vate property, were the only consideration given by the 
natives for the Company's goods. 
Some correspondence ensued between the Commis- 
sioner and myself ; which displayed on the part of Mr. 
Spain a feeling of personal offence at having been kept 
waiting three weeks, and a scrupulous attention to 
hours (such as dating his letters 3 p.m., in answer to 
mine " only just delivered " ) as important to the public 
