520 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XIX. 
manner of the gentlemen's death, after the Governor's 
question on that point, which he did not answer. 
** At the conclusion of Rauperahas speech, the Governor 
said, ' Tell him to sit down, that I may think over what to 
say to them.' 
" Captain Fit#roy then took a pencil, and wrote for about 
a quarter of an hour ; and a little more time was then occu- 
pied in consulting with the interpreters, apparently in order 
to translate what he had written into Maori. When this 
was over, the Governor again rose, and spoke to the follow- 
ing effect : — ' Listen, O ye chiefs and elder men here 
' assembled, to my words. I have now heard the Maori 
' statement and the Pakeha statement of the Wairau affair ; 
' and I have made my decision. I, the representative of 
' the Queen of England ; I, the Governor of New Zealand, 
*have made my decision. In the first place, the White 
' men were in the wrong. They had no right to survey the 
' land which you said you had not sold until Mr. Spain had 
* finished his inquiry ; they had no right to build the houses 
' they did on that land. As they were, then, first in the 
• wrong, / vnll not avenge tJmr deaths.'' 
" Repeating these last words emphatically, he ordered Mr. 
Forsaith to repeat what he had said in Maori. When this 
had been done, he went on : — 
" ' But though I will not avenge the deaths of the Pakehas 
' who were killed at the Wairau, I have to tell you that you 
' committed a horrible crime, in murdering men who had 
* surrendered themselves in reliance on your honour as chiefs. 
' White men never kill their prisoners. For the future let 
' us live peaceably and amicably — the Pakeha with the na- 
• tive, and the Maori with the Pakeha ; and let there be no 
'more bloodshed.' He went on to say that he would pro- 
tect them most fully : no pa, or burial-ground, or any other 
land which they did not choose to sell, should be taken from 
them; and no land should be taken henceforward which 
they had not sold. But the Maori should not, on their part, 
disturb settlers who were occupying land ; they must wait 
