SOLUTION OF A MAORI " DIFFICULTY."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3566, 13 December 1882, Page 4

SOLUTION OF A MAORI " DIFFICULTY."

Auckland, December 13,

The police authorities have just brought to a satisfactory issue certain delicate negotiations in respect of a matter up north that threatened at one time to cause a rupture of the peaceful relations which have subsisted so long between the two races in tho Kaipara district. It seems that about a fortnight ago a Government surveyor named Boss, who was engaged upon some operations near the Hoteo bridge, gave information to Constable Neil M'leod at Warkworth, that a yacht belonging to him which had been moored in the Hoteo river, had been seized by the natives, together with all his surveying instruments, the total value of the abstracted property amounting to several hundred pounds. The constable saw that the case was one beset with difficulty and he therefore referred it to Superintendent Thomson. In due course, by dint of a searching enquiry, the Superintendent discovered that the Maoris had had considerable provocation, and they had simply put into practice their ancient law of muru, or retaliation. He found out that one of Mr Ross's chainmen was a Maori possessed of a rather comely wife, who had been accustomed to pay pretty frequent visits to the surveyor's camp for the ostensible purpose of seeing her husband. It occurred to her Maori friends that she was becoming far more intimate than was proper with the chief of the party, and some steps were about to be taken to prevent a scandal, when the dusky beauty mysteriously disappeared. Her friends, however, traced her to Warkworth and thence to Auckland, and they discovered that she had been shipped off to some secure haven on the East Coast. The result of their investigations was the seizure of Mr Ross' yacht and impedimenta as utu for the alleged seduction and elopement. Superintendent Thomson at once perceived the importance of acting with the utmost circumspection, lest the Government should be placed in an awkward position, and he therefore brought the whole matter under the notice of] the Native Minister. Mr Bryce at once wired to Mr Clendon, the Resident Magistrate for Whangarei, Mahurangi, Port Albert, &c, requesting him to do what he could in the direction of securing restitution of the appropriated property. Mr Clendon was engaged at the timo with a Maori road squabble at Whangarei, but he managed to see see the natives on Wednesday last near Komokoriki, where they had carried the vessel. They showed themselves to be tractable and orderly, and when he informed them that they had broken the law they promised to return the yacht and the other confiscated goods, although they were greatly incensed at Ross' alleged dishonorable conduct. On Thursday evening last the vessel was taken to HelensviHe and handed over to Constable Naughton, and the owner found that not a thing had been tampered ■with or injured, not even tbe spirits had been touched.

Mr Ross has since come to town to take legal proceedings against the Kaipara natives for taking forcible and unlawful possession of his yacht. He says that after the native woman's disappearance they suspected him as the cause, but they seized the yacht first and accused him afterwards. He got a warrant for their arrest, but, being only signed by a Justice of the Peace, it was inoperative