The Company's agent stayed not to inquire as to Maori disputes regarding land. He ascertained through an interpreter the names of this cape, that river, those islands, and yonder mountain, and asked the chiefs Epuni and Wharepori of the Ngati-Awa, who had come aboard, whether they would sell the entire landscape. "Yes," answered the chiefs, who had little better title to the land than had the Company who had sold it before buying it. And so, for a collection of articles which included blankets, guns of various sorts, axes, spades, and fish-hooks--not to speak of Jew's-harps, soap, trousers, pencils, sealing-wax and cartridge-paper, the Company acquired (justly, perhaps, in their opinion) a territory about the size of Ireland, embracing both the east and west coasts of New Zealand. This astonishing bargain, begun on the deck of the _Tory_, took some months to complete, and by that time the agent had taken formal possession of the fine bay known as Port Nicholson--Poneki in the Maori tongue--and planned out the settlement of Britannia at the entrance to the charming valley of the Eritonga, better known now--if not so musically named--as the Hutt river. Fast in the wake of the _Tory_ followed the _Aurora_ with the first instalment of immigrants, whose feelings may be imagined, when they realised that nobody could give or sell to them the right and title to the lands they desired to call their own. They learned this much in March 1840 from the Maori themselves, when, owing to its faulty position, the settlement on the Hutt was abandoned, and the town of Wellington founded upon the flats of Thorndon and Te Aro, which lay in a more sheltered bay of the great basin of Port Nicholson. Other emigrants from England and elsewhere soon arrived; the first steamer puffed and churned its way into the harbour; and the astounded Maori demanded anxiously whether "all the tribes had left England and come to settle among them?" They were not disinclined to welcome the settlers; but Puakawa and other chiefs strongly objected to part with their lands, which they averred had been sold by people who had no right to dispose of them. This was sad hearing; but, if a Company choose to "buy" twenty million acres from some fifty people whose right to sell them is hotly disputed, it is to be expected that the ten thousand or so who claim ownership of those acres will have something to say on the subject. Mercifully for the settlers, the Maori near Wellington had no objection to their lands being occupied, but merely wished to make it clear that they had not been sold outright. So the settlers became aware before long that the Company's purchases were not good, and that, if they, the immigrants, bought land of the Company, their own title to it would be equally not good, and would in the natural course of events become liable to investigation.