Chap. XIV, NATIVES FLOCK TO TARANAKI. 353 
as I did in the progress of the White community, and 
was in raptures with the roads and bridges. 
"While at New Plymouth, I rode with Mr. Cooke 
to the Waiter a, 12 miles north of the town, and then 
went inland to the Pa Pukerangiora, on the edge of 
the broken country. This site is famous for the dreadful 
carnage which took place upon the capture of the pa 
Tf^ero TVeru, in about 1833. At a settlement near the 
base of the hill on which it once stood, we fell in with 
an old chief of the Ngatiawa, named ff^atitiri, or 
'* Thunder," who had managed to escape from the 
massacre. He related to us many vivid scenes of the 
bloody campaign which had occasioned the total deser- 
tion of this country for so many years. 
Now that living in it was rendered secure by the 
presence of the White settlers, the native population 
was almost daily increasing. Not only returned slaves, 
freed by their TVaikato masters as they embraced the 
Christian faith, but numbers of those who had retreated 
from the harassing life of a frontier country to 
TVaikanae, Port Nicholson, and Queen Charlotte's 
Sound, were flocking back to their ancient habitations ; 
and these formed two classes of new claimants for 
compensation. Finding how great a value had been 
conferred on the land which had been worthless before 
they left, each strove to establish his claim to that sur- 
rounding the spot where he had formerly lived or grown 
potatoes ; and all denied the right of the natives whom 
we had found resident on the spot to sell any but a very 
small portion. 
If we had not bought it, and rendered it secure by 
colonization, they would never have thought of coming 
to establish their claim even to the cultivations and 
ancient sites oi pas which they had formally abandoned 
so many years ago. 
VOL. II. 2 A 
