While I am on the subject of land and land titles, I may as well here mention that many years after the purchase of my land I received notice to appear before certain persons called "Land Commissioners," who were part and parcel of the new inventions which had come up soon after the arrival of the first governor, and which are still a trouble to the land. I was informed that I must appear and prove my title to the land I have mentioned, on pain of forfeiture of the same. Now I could not see what right any one could have to plague me in this way, and if I had had no one but the commissioners and two or three hundred men of their tribe to deal with, I should have put my pa in fighting order, and told them to "come on;" for before this time I had had occasion to build a pa, (a little misunderstanding,) and being a regularly naturalized member of a strong tribe, could raise men to defend it at the shortest notice. But somehow these people had cunningly managed to mix up the name of Queen Victoria, God bless her! (no disparagement to King Potatau) in the matter; and I, though a pakeha Maori, am a loyal subject to her Majesty, and will stick up and fight for her as long as ever I can muster a good imitation of courage or a leg to stand upon. This being the case, I made a very unwilling appearance at the court, and explained and defended my title to the land in an oration of four hours and a half's duration; and which, though I was much out of practice, I flatter myself was a good specimen of English rhetoric, and which, for its own merits as well as for another reason which I was not aware of at the time, was listened to by the court with the greatest patience. When I had concluded, and having been asked "if I had any more to say?" I saw the commissioner beginning to count my words, which had been all written, I suppose, in shorthand; and having ascertained how many thousand I had spoken, he handed me a bill, in which I was charged by the word, for every word I had spoken, at the rate of one farthing and one twentieth per word. Oh, Cicero! Oh, Demosthenes! Oh, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan! Oh, Daniel O'Connell! what would have become of you, if such a stopper had been clapt on your jawing tackle? Fame would never have cracked her trumpet, and "Dan" would never have raised the _rint_. For my part I have never recovered the shock. I have since that time become taciturn, and have adopted a Spartan brevity when forced to speak, and I fear I shall never again have the full swing of my mother tongue. Besides this, I was charged ten shillings each for a little army of witnesses who I had brought by way of being on the sure side--five shillings a head for calling them into court, and five more for "examining" them; said examination consisting of one question each, after which they were told to "be off." I do believe had I brought up a whole tribe, as I had thoughts of doing, the commissioners would not have minded examining them all.