“His Excellency,” wrote the missionary, “spent half a day at Rangiaowhia, and expressed himself much pleased with the progress of the natives at that place. He visited the mill, which was working at the time. Two bags of flour were presented to him for Her Majesty the Queen, and they have since been forwarded to London. The Governor has since that time presented the Rangiaowhia natives with a pair of fine horses, a dray and harness, and a plough and harness. He also requested me to engage a farm servant to instruct the natives in the use of the plough, etc. [3] The value of the flour sent down this year from Rangiaowhia and now ready for the Auckland market may be estimated at about £330. Of this sum upward of £240 was, or will be, spent in the purchase of horses, drays, and ploughs. Each little tribe is now endeavouring to procure a plough and a pair of horses, and the people expect during the next year to have at least ten ploughs at work. The rapid advancement in cultivation is the fruit of Sir George Grey’s kind present to introduce the plough at those places. One of the chiefs at Rangiaowhia has erected a small boarded house. He has also several cows, one of which he generally milks in the morning.” Such is the story of the very practical missionary work in this district. “Te Mokena” truly tamed the people; old cannibals followed the plough and spent days in discussing the Auckland market prices of wheat and flour. Distant white communities, too, came to depend largely on the Maori farmers of the Upper Waikato for their breadstuffs; and when the great gold rushes began in California and Victoria, in 1849–52, the cargoes of New Zealand produce sent to far-away San Francisco and to Melbourne often contained shipments from Rangiaowhia and other Maori farm-villages. CHAPTER IV. THE GOLDEN AGE BEFORE THE WAR. The period from about 1845 to 1860 was the era of peaceful progress and industry among Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto. It was not until the latter year that the outbreak of the Taranaki War, the forerunner of that in Waikato, interrupted the new and profitable era of wheat-growing and flour-milling and the pleasures of the annual canoeing expeditions down the Waipa and Waikato to the city markets. These farm-settlements of Morgan’s making were in what may be called their zenith of prosperity in the year 1852, when prices for produce were high. In February of that year a visit was paid to Te Awamutu and Rangiaowhia by a party of travellers from Auckland and Onehunga, among whom was young Heywood Crispe, later a well-known Mauku settler and volunteer rifleman. Describing long afterwards this memorable Waikato expedition, Mr Crispe said, after narrating that the canoe voyage ended at Te Rore, on the Waipa: