Talk to me of the "native difficulty"--pooh! I think it was in 1822 that an old friend of mine bought, at Kawhia, a woman who was just going to be baked. He gave a cartridge-box full of cartridges for her; which was a great deal more than she was really worth: but humanity does not stick at trifles. He took her back to her friends at Taranaki, whence she had been taken, and her friends there gave him at once two tons of flax and eighteen pigs, and asked him to remain a few days longer till they should collect a still larger present in return for his kindness; but, as he found out their intention was to take the schooner, and knock himself and crew on the head, he made off in the night. Yet he maintains, to this day, that "virtue is its own reward:" "at least 'tis so at Taranaki." Virtue, however, must have been on a visit to some other country (she _does_ go out sometimes), when I saw and heard a British subject, a slave to some natives on the West Coast, begging hard for somebody to buy him. The price asked was one musket; but the only person on board the vessel possessing those articles, preferred to invest in a different commodity. The consequence was, that the above-mentioned unit of the great British nation lived, and ("Rule, Britannia" to the contrary notwithstanding) died a slave: but whether he was buried, deponent sayeth not. My old _rangatira_ at last began to show signs that his time to leave this world of care was approaching. He had arrived at a great age, and a rapid and general breaking up of his strength became plainly observable. He often grumbled that men should grow old, and oftener that no great war broke out in which he might make a final display, and die with _eclat_. The last two years of his life were spent almost entirely at my house; which, however, he never entered. He would sit whole days on a fallen puriri near the house, with his spear sticking up beside him, and speaking to no one, but sometimes humming in a low droning tone some old ditty which no one knew the meaning of but himself, and at night he would disappear to some of the numerous nests, or little sheds, he had around the place. In summer, he would roll himself in his blanket and sleep anywhere; but no one could tell exactly where.