This may to some extent have been the case when the colonists first came to settle in the country. But the natives are far too intelligent to remain long ignorant of the power of pen, ink, and paper, and there is no doubt that in many cases they intentionally outwitted the purchaser, either by putting forward a sham owner of the ground, who had no right to sell it, and who vanished with his share of the prize as soon as the bargain was concluded, or by asserting ignorance of the meaning of the document which had been signed, and refusing to carry out its conditions. That the white men succeeded too often in cheating the natives is unfortunately true, but it is no less true that the natives as often cheated the colonists. Law among the New Zealanders seems to be of the simplest kind, and, as far as we know, is not so well developed as among some of the tribes of Southern Africa. The three offences of which the law takes cognizance are murder, theft, and adultery. For the first of these offences a sort of _lex talionis_ holds good, the relatives of the slain man being sure, sooner or later, to kill the murderer, unless he manages to compromise with them. Even theft is punished in a similar fashion, the thief being robbed in his turn. As to the third offence, it is punishable in various ways; but both the offending parties are supposed to have forfeited their lives to the husband. If, therefore, the fact be discovered, and the culprit be a person of low rank, he seeks safety in flight, while, if he be a man of rank, he expects that the offended husband will make war upon him. Sometimes, if a wife discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her, she will kill his paramour, or, at all events, disgrace her after the native custom, by stripping off all her clothes, and exposing her in public. Even the husband is sometimes subjected to this punishment by the wife’s relations; and so much dreaded is this disgrace that men have been known to commit suicide when their offence has been discovered. Suicide, by the way, is not at all uncommon among the New Zealanders, who always think that death is better than disgrace, and sometimes destroy themselves under the most trivial provocation. One such case is mentioned by Mr. Angas. “On arriving at the village or kainga of Ko Nghahokowitu, we found all the natives in a state of extraordinary excitement. We had observed numbers of people running in that direction, along the margin of the river, from the different plantations, and, on inquiry, we learned that an hour previously to our arrival the son of an influential chief had committed suicide by shooting himself with a musket.