IN THE EARLY DAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13672, 13 February 1908, Page 8

IN THE EARLY DAYS.

MAORI CHIEF'S VISIT TO SYDNEY. In the -historical records of Nw Zealand, just published by the Government printer, under the direction of Hon. R. McMab, there are some interesting particulars of a visit which Tip-a-he, a powerful Maori chief of the Bay of Islands, paid to Sydney in 1806. The chief was accompanied by four of his sons, and made the voyage to the New South Wales capital, then a mere village, by way of Norfolk Island, where he was most hospitably entertained by the commandant, Captain Piper. On his arrival in Sydney he waited upon the Governor, clad in the costume of his country, and mad 3 a most favourable impression. The Governor's description of ( his visitor is included in the records. "Tip-a-he," it reads, " is sft llin high, stout, and extremely well made. His age appears about 46 or 48. His face is completely tattooed with Ilia spiral marks shown in' ' Hawkesworth's and Cook's Second Voyage,' which., with similar marks on his hips and other parts of his body, point him out as a considerable chief or Etangatida Etikitia of the firstclass. . To say that lie was nearly civilised falls far short of his character, as every action and observation -shows an uncommon attention to the rules of decency and propriety in his every action, and he has much of the airs and manners of a man conversant with the world he lives in. In conversation he is extremely facetious and jocose, and as he never reflected on any person, so Tip-a-ho was alive to the least appearance of slight or inattention in others." The Governor has also left an account of his interviews with Tip-a-he concerning the fate of two soldiers and a convict who had been sent as prisoners from Fort Dalrymple, to be tried by the Criminal Court for stealing some pork from the King's stores. The men were proved to be guilty, and the Maori chief raised a vigorous protest against the proposal to execute them for their offence. Ha denounced the brutal justice of the convict settlement, and worked himself into a great fury when the Governor refused to grant the prisoners an immediate reprieve. He begged that they might be allowed to return with him "to New Zealand, where the people, he said, had more sense and more mercy, and finally the authorities pacified him by promising that the sentence should bo modified? Some little time before he had told the Governor, as an illustration of the superiority of his own administration of jus* tice, how he had killed one of his wives to silence her troublesome tongue.