More valuable whites were admitted into the tribes, and married to one, sometimes two or three, wives. The relatives of these last occasionally resorted to an effectual method of securing their fidelity by tattooing them. One of them, John Rutherford, survived and describes the process. But as he claims to have had his face and part of his body thoroughly tattooed in four hours, his story is but one proof amongst a multitude that veracity was not a needful part of the equipment of the New Zealand adventurer of the Alsatian epoch. Once enlisted, the _Pakehas_ were expected to distinguish themselves in the incessant tribal wars. Most of them took their share of fighting with gusto. As trade between whites and Maoris grew, each tribe made a point of having a white agent-general, called their _Pakeha_ Maori (Foreigner Maorified), to conduct their trade and business with his fellows. He was the tribe's vassal, whom they petted and plundered as the mood led them, but whom they protected against outsiders. These gentry were for the most part admirably qualified to spread the vices of civilization and discredit its precepts. But, illiterate ruffians as most of them were, they had their uses in aiding peaceful intercourse between the races. Some, too, were not illiterate. A Shakespeare and a Lemprière were once found in the possession of a chief in the wildest part of the interior. They had belonged to his _Pakeha_ long since dead. Elsewhere a tattered prayer-book was shown as the only relic of another. One of the kind, Maning by name, who lived with a tribe on the beautiful inlet of Hokianga, will always be known as _the_ Pakeha Maori. He was an Irish adventurer, possessed not only of uncommon courage and acuteness, but of real literary talent and a genial and charming humour. He lived to see savagery replaced by colonization, and to become a judicial officer in the service of the Queen's Government. Some of his reminiscences, embodied in a volume entitled _Old New Zealand_, still form the best book which the Colony has been able to produce. Nowhere have the comedy and childishness of savage life been so delightfully portrayed. Nowhere else do we get such an insight into that strange medley of contradictions and caprices, the Maori's mind.