The difficulties of the Confederation accumulated with the increase of trade and population, both of which were growing rapidly. In the year 1836 no fewer than 93 British, 54 American, and 3 French ships put in at the Bay of Islands. The irregular settlement of white people at various spots along the coast had increased in like manner, until in the early part of 1838 a body of no less than 2000 British subjects had taken up their permanent abode in New Zealand. The part these people were playing in the scheme of civilisation was still small, if we are to accept as accurate the verdict of Dr. G. R. Jameson, who in his _Travels in New Zealand_ has taken the responsibility of saying that from all he had seen and heard respecting the fixed traders, or the casual visitors for trade, it could be affirmed in the most positive terms that not one of them had ever attempted to teach a native to read or write, or to communicate to his mind one ray of Christian knowledge or of moral rectitude. With a few honourable exceptions they had been in their intercourse with the natives guided by one ruling impulse--the love of gain. Their predominant aim was ever and always to obtain the greatest possible quantity of pigs, potatoes, flax, maize, labour, or land in exchange for the smallest possible amount of tobacco, ammunition, and piece-goods.[23] It was not alone, however, by the criminal taint of a large section of the population and this excessive hunger for trade that the seeds of continued anarchy were sown. A new evil was at hand which threatened to sap the independence of the Maori, and reduce them to a condition of speedy and abject poverty. This was the land hunger which about this time seized the white population of Australia. There the opinion had gripped the public mind that under the Declaration of Independence it would be possible to pursue in New Zealand the schemes of land aggregation which Sir George Gipps had checked in New South Wales. Under his new land regulations the price of land in that colony had been raised from 3s. to 12s. per acre, and hearing that large areas were to be obtained in New Zealand for less than the proverbial song, the speculators swarmed over to the Bay of Islands, and in the year 1837 the land fever in all its phases of "sharking," "jobbing," and legitimate purchase literally raged throughout the country. "What gold was to the Spaniard in Mexico the land at this period became to the English in these islands, and as the warlike aborigines most coveted the acquisition of firearms, they divested themselves of their only possessions in order to obtain those deadly instruments, which, together with ardent spirits, were the most potent means for the destruction of their race. Almost every captain of a ship arriving in Sydney exhibited a piece of paper with a tattooed native head rudely drawn upon it, which he described as the title-deed of an estate bought for a few muskets, hatchets, or blankets."