354 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. C^ap. XIV. 
The Native Reserves, however, were abundantly 
sufficient to maintain these new-comers as well as the 
few inhabitants who had dwelt on through danger and 
trouble in their native land. But as the Reserves were 
not managed for the benefit of the natives, the returned 
slaves and exiles were constantly causing little dis- 
turbances, which would have been doubtless more 
serious if they had not remembered the intrepid conduct 
of Messrs. Cooke and Wicksteed at the PFaitera, and 
heard of the heavy falls which Bayly, the West-country 
wrestler, had given the champion of the party who 
came to pull down his tent. 
It was while here that I first heard of the uncertain 
state in which things were now standing between the 
Company and the Colonial Office in England. Mr. 
Wicksteed, the Company's Agent, received a despatch 
from Wellington, informing him of the reduction of 
the Company's expenditure at all the settlements, in- 
cluding that of the salaries of the Agents and other 
officers, by one-half in most cases. 
The Directors were applying to Lord Stanley for 
the equitable fulfilment of the Agreement of 1840, and 
a long negotiation and correspondence had ensued, of 
which the result was not yet known. But in the 
meanwhile the Company's operations Avere suspended ; 
ho more land was sold ; no more emigrants were sent 
out ; and the impetus which had been given to immi- 
gration of the best sort at the end of the last year was 
brought to a stop. 
Great difficulties seemed likely to ensue ; especially 
at Nelson, where there was at present too large a 
proportion of labourers, and where the inability of 
the Company to fill up the large scale on which that 
settlement had been founded, in consequence of the ge- 
neral discouragement caused by the obstruction to their 
