400 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XV. 
Colonel Wakefield told me that he had passed the 
volunteers under review on the Sunday morning pre- 
vious to my arrival, and that they seemed to have pro- 
fited very well by their drilling, except a troop of some 
20 cavalry composed of gentry, whose horses were not 
yet accustomed to the drums or to the banging of the 
sabres about their ribs. There were about 400 
bayonets mustered ; but Colonel Wakefield spoke in 
special praise of the appearance and evolutions of a 
rifle corps of about 100, composed of the higher class. 
They had been well drilled by Major Durie, the Chief 
Commandant of the Volunteers, and their courage 
and dependence on each other in case of sudden emer- 
gency was looked upon as certain. 
Early in June, news had been received at Welling- 
ton of a battle between two native tribes in the North, 
which had terminated in great loss of life. 
Mr. Shortland, almost immediately that he became 
Colonial Secretary, had purchased for the Government 
a large district of land at Manganui, north of the B.ay 
of Islands. But he bought it of a chief named Pana- 
kareao, or Noble, whose fathers had been driven from 
the territory in question to Kaitaia about thirty years 
before. And the conquerors, who had been in peace- 
able possession ever since, had sold the same tract to 
different private individuals about eight years before the 
Government contract. The most bitter disputes had 
arisen between the two native parties, fomented on the 
one hand by the private land-claimants, and on the other 
by the officers and supporters of Government, who, 
from Governor Hobson downwards, concurred in de- 
scribing Noble as " a fine intelligent missionary 
" native." 
At length, the Land Commissioner, Colonel God- 
frey, had gone to investigate the claims to land in that 
