On the other hand, should the pakeha fail in a culpable manner in the performance of his duties--though he would not, as a rule, be subjected to any stated punishment--he would soon begin to find a most unaccountable train of accidents and all sorts of unpleasant occurrences happening; enough, in the aggregate, to drive Job himself out of his wits: and, moreover, he would _get a bad name_, which, though he removed, would follow him from one end of the island to the other, and effectually prevent him having the slightest chance of doing any good,--that is, holding his own in the country; as the natives, wherever he went, would consider him a person out of whom the most was to be made at once, since he was not to be depended on as a source of permanent revenue. I have known several industrious, active, and sober pakehas who never could do any good, and whose lives, for a long series of years, were a mere train of mishaps, till at last they were reduced to extreme poverty; merely from having, in their first dealings with the natives, got a bad name, in consequence of not having been able to understand clearly the beauty of the set of regulations I have just mentioned, and from an inability to make them work smoothly. The bad name I have mentioned was short and expressive: wherever they went, there would be sure to be some one who would introduce them to their new acquaintances as "a pakeha _pakeke_,"--a hard pakeha; "a pakeha _taehae_"--a miser; or, to sum up all, "a pakeha _kino_." The chief who claimed me was a good specimen of the Maori _rangatira_. He was a very old man, and had fought the French when Marion, the French circumnavigator, was killed. He had killed a Frenchman himself, and carried his thighs and legs many miles as a _bonne bouche_ for his friends at home at the pa. This old gentleman was not head of his tribe; but he was a man of good family, related to several high chiefs. He was head of a strong family, or _hapu_, which mustered a considerable number of fighting men; all his near relations. He had been himself a most celebrated fighting man, and a war chief; and was altogether a highly respectable person, and of great weight in the councils of the tribe. I may say I was fortunate in having been appropriated by this old patrician. He gave me very little trouble; did not press his rights and privileges too forcibly on my notice; and, in fact behaved in all respects towards me in so liberal and friendly a manner, that before long I began to have a very sincere regard for him, and he to take a sort of paternal interest in me; this was both gratifying to observe, and also extremely comical sometimes, when he, out of real anxiety to see me a perfectly accomplished _rangatira_, would lecture on good manners, etiquette, and the use of the spear. He was, indeed, a model of a _rangatira_, and well worth being described.