Chap. XV. ENROLMENT OF VOLUNTEERS. 399 
have appeared. But Nelson, although it had been 
founded 21 months, and numbered a larger population . 
than the Capital, had not yet a Coroner or the means 
of summoning a Coroner's Jury. 
While the Magistrates went to examine witnesses, 
the people of Wellington became alarmed at their 
totally defenceless state, in case of the outrages of 
Rauperaha and his followers being continued in this 
direction, now that he had managed to get to Otaki 
in safety. What E Ahu had told me of his inten- 
tions, when supposing that I should have killed his son, 
plainly showed that the people of Wellington were 
not wrong. The most sudden whim, the most false 
and absurd report, might lead to these consequences 
in the present excited state of the natives, warm as it 
were with the smell of blood, and kept up to the mark 
by Rauperaha and his handcuff. 
So the settlers had enrolled themselves as volunteers, 
under the express sanction and superintendence of the 
Mayor, the Justices of the Peace, and Mr. Macdonogh 
the Police Magistrate, who swore them in as special 
constables. A Committee of Public Safety had been 
appointed; a battery built and mounted with two 
18-pounders on the flag-staff hill; officers chosen to 
command and drill the volunteers ; and the necessary 
measures taken to place all the powder in the settle- 
ment under the control of the authorities. Curiously 
enough, a large quantity of gunpowder was found in 
the house of the Rev. Mr. Smales, the Wesleyan 
missionary who had replaced Mr, Aldred on his de- 
parture for the Chatham Islands. ]Mr. Smales wrote 
a very ungentlemanly letter in answer to the account 
given of this discovery in the paper ; and caught the 
name of " Gunpowder Smales" among the lower class 
of settlers in consequence. 
