From the end of last century down to 1840, a few individual white men took up their residence among the Maori here and there. These Pakeha-Maori, as they are called, were runaway sailors, or such as had been shipwrecked or made prisoners, or were wild, adventurous characters who preferred the savage life to the restraints of civilization. They married Maori women, raised families, and conformed to all the native customs, sometimes becoming chiefs and leaders in war. When some fitful intercourse was established with Sydney, these men were the medium of trade, and achieved immense importance in that way. It soon became the fashion among the chiefs of tribes for each to have his own special Pakeha-Maori. Force was sometimes resorted to to obtain these men. They were captured and compelled to remain, while wars between rival tribes were conducted for the possession of them. Rutherford, a survivor of the _Agnes_, was one such. His experiences of twelve years' residence among the Maori are recorded in Lord Brougham's compilation. Judge Maning has related the tale of another, at a somewhat later date. In 1814, as has been elsewhere mentioned, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, together with some other missionaries, landed in the Bay of Islands; and from that event, New Zealand's real history may be said to commence. The story of Marsden's interest in New Zealand is not without a certain romantic element. He was chaplain to the Government of New South Wales. At Sydney he had many opportunities of hearing of New Zealand, and of the terrible race of fighting man-eaters who inhabited it. Traders spoke freely of all they knew, and the barbarities, treacheries, and fearful deeds of the Maori, much exaggerated, no doubt, were matters of common report. Moreover, individual Maori sometimes shipped as sailors on board the vessels that touched on their coasts; and so Marsden was able to judge of the character of the race from the actual specimens he saw. We may be sure that he was favourably impressed by their evident superiority in every way to the black aborigines of Australia. Marsden was in England in 1809, and there he vainly endeavoured to awaken sympathy on behalf of the Maori, and to persuade the Christian public to make effort for their help. On his return, he noticed, among the sailors of his ship, a coloured man, very sick and dejected. Him he made acquaintance with, finding him to be Ruatara, a Maori of the chieftain rank, belonging to the Ngapuhi tribe. Ruatara had had an eventful time of it. In 1805, when a mere lad of eighteen, he had shipped on board a whaler, hoping thereby to see something of the world. In her he was treated badly, being marooned on a desert island for some months, and eventually brought back again to New Zealand, without more experience than a whaling cruise in the South Sea could give him.