The political state of the King Country forms one of the most interesting chapters in the history of New Zealand. In the early days, before the colony was founded in 1840, and long after that event, there were no such obstacles to travelling through the island as existed in later times. The Maoris rather welcomed Europeans, who were free to go anywhere, except on places which were _tapu_,[2] or sacred in their eyes, and in consequence what little has been hitherto known of the King Country has been derived from the experiences of one or two travellers who penetrated into portions of it some thirty years ago. Among the most active of the early travellers was Ferdinand Von Hochstetter, a member of the Austrian Novara Expedition, who, in 1859, at the instance of Sir George Grey, at that time Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, made a tour through a portion of the North Island in company with Drummond Hay, Koch, Bruno, Hamel, and a number of European attendants and natives. At this time the Maoris were ready to welcome Europeans; hostilities between the two races had never broken out, and Hochstetter and his party were received and _fêted_ everywhere with almost regal honours. But in the course of years, as it was evident to the natives that the Europeans were the coming power in the land, suspicion and distrust were excited, and at last the tocsin sounded. The native chiefs, seeing that their influence was declining, and that in proportion to the alienation of the land, their _mana_ or authority over the tribes decreased, began to bestir themselves in earnest. It was considered that a head was needed to initiate a form of Government among the tribes to resist the encroachments daily made by the Europeans, and which seemed to threaten the national extinction of the native race.