It is often the fate of a new country to receive at first the very worst elements, and this was the experience of New Zealand. As soon as it became known that a man might enter her gates without thereby qualifying for the cooking-pot, an eager crowd of depraved humanity rushed jostling through. The sealers and whalers were rough, but not a few were honest fellows, while, as a class, they were refined gentlemen beside the mob of escaped murderers, thieves, and panderers to moral filth, which overflowed from the convict-swamped shores of New South Wales. Had not the Maori, despite their grave faults, been capable of much better things, they could never have shaken free from the garments of impurity in which some of the earliest settlers endeavoured to clothe them. But there was good stuff in the Maori, and, though they fell often, they continually rose again. One innate virtue they possessed--that of sobriety. It was rarely that the Pakeha could induce them to indulge in the "fire-water"--"stink-water" was their name for it--which has been the ruin of more than one coloured race. But many years were yet to elapse before the Maori threw off the worst of their own bad manners, much less improved upon those of their white instructors, and scenes of violence and bloodshed were to be enacted before the sons of Maui should dwell together in peace among themselves, or bend their stubborn necks beneath the yoke of the Pakeha. From time to time there were terrible outbreaks, and one of the worst of these was that which is evilly remembered as "The Massacre of the _Boyd_." As early as 1805 an English gentleman had induced an adventurous Maori to accompany him to London, and not a few chiefs had since then paid visits to Sydney, while others of lower rank had embarked under the masters of vessels which touched at the Islands. These last were, of course, subject to the same discipline as the sailors; but, free and independent as they had always been, this seems to have been a hard lesson for them to learn. Hence arose misunderstandings, and from one such was developed the tragedy of the _Boyd_. On her voyage from Sydney to London in 1809 the ship was to call at Whangaroa, near the Bay of Islands, to load wood for masts and spars. Consequently, several Maori who were stranded in Sydney embraced the opportunity to work their passage back to their own country. Among these was Tarra, a chief's son, and he, too proud or, as he averred, too ill to work, refused to do his duty. Starvation was tried as a means of cure; but this failing, young Tarra was twice tied up and soundly flogged. Boadicea, bleeding from the rods of the Romans, had not more indignation than had Tarra when he showed his scars and called upon his tribe to avenge him upon those who had inflicted them.