land given to him by the Government. He was not a chivalrous opponent. A savage, he made war in savage fashion. But he was a capable person; and I cannot resist the conclusion that in being banished to the Chathams and kept there without trial, he was given reason to think himself most unjustly used. [Illustration: NATIVE GATHERING] The only trouble given by the natives at the Chathams in later days took the form of a little comedy. The Maori there own a good deal of live-stock, including some thousands of sheep and a number of unpleasant and objectionable dogs. The Maori _kuri_, an unattractive mongrel at the best, is never popular with white settlers; but in the year 1890 the _kuri_ of the Chathams became a distinct nuisance. A dog-tax was levied on the owners, but this failed either to make them reduce the number of their dogs or restrain them from worrying the flocks of the white settlers. If I remember rightly, the Maori simply declined to pay the dog-tax. When they were prosecuted and fined, they refused to pay the fines. The Government of the day, with more vigour than humour, despatched a steamer to the Chathams, arrested some forty of the recalcitrants, brought them to the South Island, and lodged them in Lyttelton Gaol. The Maori, who have a keen sense of the ridiculous, offered no resistance whatever. I suspect that they did not greatly dislike the trip; it enabled them to see the world. Their notion of hard labour and prison discipline was to eat well, to smoke tobacco, and to bask in the sunshine of the prison yard. It was impossible to treat them harshly. After a while they were sent home, where their adventure formed food for conversation in many and many a nocturnal _korero_. In the meantime their dogs lived and continued to chase sheep. At this stage the writer of these pages joined the New Zealand Government, and the unhappy white flock-owners laid their troubles before him. At first the little knot did not seem, to an inexperienced Minister, quite easy to untie. After some cogitation, however, a way was found of ending the comedy of errors. What that was is another story. Since then, no more terrible incident has disturbed the Chathams than the grounding of an Antarctic iceberg on their coast--a somewhat startling apparition in latitude 44° south.