The later history of our relations with the natives all hinges on the land question. The New Zealand Company, and many private speculators as well, bargaining through interpreters, believed that they had bought enormous areas of land for a mere nothing: the Maoris imagined that they had sold very little. Moreover, it was very doubtful who really had the power to sell the land, since the waste lands of the Maoris were all held in common. To settle the disputes the Home Government sent out a special Commissioner who decided that most of the bargains could not be allowed to stand. Even so the Maoris found it hard to appreciate our ideas as to sale and possession of land. There was endless trouble until Sir George Grey was sent over from South Australia in 1845, learnt the native language, and reduced both sides to order. For comparatively small sums he succeeded in buying gradually those parts of the country which were most essential to the white settlers, while leaving plenty for the support of the original inhabitants; for we must remember that the Maoris were very few in proportion to the area of the country. Grey was popular with the Maoris, and when he left, in 1855, the country was fairly well organised. But the land question was not yet finally settled. In 1857, the Maoris tried to federate under a native king, the main object of the association being to oppose the further sale of land to the white settlers. The whole of Central Maoriland, east and west of Lake Taupo, was unfriendly to us. The trouble came to a head over a land claim in the Taranaki district, and the result was over ten years of raids and casual fighting which could hardly be called organised war, since it moved from district to district, and the different tribes had no common policy or unity. As the sections were subdued from time to time, the usual penalty inflicted was confiscation of land; so that by 1870 the whole of the coast strip, from the north of Hawkes Bay round by Wellington to the Mokau River on the west, was in our possession. So, too, was all the land on both sides of the Lower Waikato, and a narrow fringe along the Bay of Plenty. Thus there was practically a ring fence put round Central Maoriland, and until quite recently there was no connexion between Wellington and Auckland across this isolated block. Sir George Grey, who had returned as Governor, in 1861, was largely responsible for laying down the lines on which the Maori problem was finally and successfully solved.