The child was recovered, but Mrs. Guard and the children testified that this native had been a good friend to them when in captivity. Nevertheless, his head was cut off and tumbled about on the beach. The _Alligator_ then bombarded the native pah, destroyed all its houses to the number of 200, with all the provisions they contained, killing from twenty to thirty men in the process. This scarcely agreed with the letter which Mr. Busby had just received, in which he was directed to express to the Maori chiefs the regret which the King of England felt at the injuries committed by white men against Maoris. #4. Captain Hobson.#--But there were many difficulties in securing justice between fickle savages and white men who were in general so ruffianly as those who then dwelt in New Zealand. The atrocities of the _Harriet_ episode did some good, however, for along with other circumstances they stirred up the English Government to make some inquiries into the manner in which Englishmen treated the natives of uncivilised countries. These inquiries showed much injustice and sometimes wanton cruelty, and when a petition came from the respectable people of Kororarika, asking that some check should be put upon the licence of the low white men who frequented that port, the English Government resolved to annex New Zealand if the Maoris were willing to be received into the British Empire. For that purpose they chose Captain Hobson, a worthy and upright sea-captain, who in his ship of war, the _Rattlesnake_, had seen much of Australia and New Zealand. It was he who had taken Sir Richard Bourke to Port Phillip in 1837, and Hobson's Bay was named in his honour. After that he had been sent by Bourke to the Bay of Islands to inquire into the condition of things there, and when he had gone home to England he had given evidence as to the disorder which prevailed in New Zealand. He was sent in a war-ship, the _Druid_, with instructions to keep the white men in order, and to ask the natives if they would like to become subjects of Queen Victoria and live under her protection. If they agreed to do so, he was to form New Zealand into an English colony and he was to be its Lieutenant-Governor under the general control of the Governor of New South Wales.