But Monsieur the "Sovereign Chief" did not arrive for three years, and then he suddenly appeared in Hokianga with nearly a hundred followers. Settlers and Maori beheld with apprehension this select company; but when the invader claimed royal honours and nominated the master of the vessel in which he had arrived his "Lord High Admiral," everybody laughed--except the "Sovereign Chief and King." The baron soon had reason to weep; for of a sudden came information that Mr. Kendall's thirty-six axes, paid for the forty thousand acres, had been merely a deposit. One is relieved to learn this, but it must have been very depressing news for the would-be proprietor. For the Royal Exchequer was very low, and as the great officers of state could get no pay for the arduous duties they performed, they promptly resigned. So, too, did the "Sovereign Chief," and vanished, to reappear later, without the "purple," in the guise of an ordinary and very excellent citizen. The settlement at Kororareka has already been referred to as a place in which the orgies of white and brown justified the epithet "scandalous." It was not the only spot in this Eden over which lay the trail of the serpent; so, for the sake of morality, as well as for political reasons, the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, appealed to the British Government to appoint a Resident at the Bay of Islands. Many years had elapsed between the murder of Captain Marion du Fresne and the visit of the next French ship. At rare intervals a vessel dropped anchor in one of the bays; but there was little sustained intercourse. Even as late as 1834, so bitter were their memories of the "_Wi-Wi_" (_Oui-Oui_) that the Nga-Puhi chiefs took alarm at the persistent rumour of a French occupation of New Zealand, and induced the missionaries to draw up a petition to the "Gracious Chief of England," William the Fourth, to protect them from "the tribe of Marion." The Maori had also begun to recognise that the British Pakeha were not over clean-handed in their dealings with them; for, in addition to the above, they prayed the "Gracious Chief" to prevent his own people from depriving them of their lands. The result of this unrest was the appointment of Mr. Busby as British Resident. He arrived at the Bay of Islands in 1833, and led off in great style by proposing that all New Zealand should be ruled by a Parliament of Chiefs, and that the country should adopt a national flag to signify its independence. The idea caught the fancy of some; the flag arrived from Sydney in H.M.S. _Alligator_, and was inaugurated with a salute of twenty-one guns. The Parliament of Chiefs took shape a little later, when thirty-five hereditary chiefs declared their independence, and received the designation of the "United Tribes of New Zealand."