slave) to afford a treat to some chiefs of the Ngatiraukawa who had assembled at Mana upon the occasion of a tangi for his sister's death;”* I have reasons for believing that the story as told to Colonel Wakefield was not strictly correct, and that it was Rangihaeata who had committed the deeds referred to, and that it was a young woman, and not a man, who had been the victim. whilst he also mentions that shortly before that occurrence “the Ngatiraukawa had killed six native missionaries who had wandered amongst them, and eaten their bodies, and then offered their heads for sale to his informant.” He also mentions that on the 15th October, 1839, the day before his first interview with Rauparaha, a great battle had taken place near Otaki between the Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiawa, in which nearly sixty men had been killed, and a very much larger number seriously wounded. I must not omit, however, to state that about this time the Rev. Octavius Hadfield, late Bishop of Wellington, had been stationed at Waikanae, and that his presence there soon afterwards brought about a great and beneficial change in the feelings and habits of the native people. In a letter written by Colonel Wakefield to the secretary of the New Zealand Company in February, 1842, he thus points to the results of Mr. Hadfield's labours: “Mr. Hadfield, who is a single-minded and a sincere minister of the Gospel, well deserves the estimate in which he is held by all parties in Cook Strait. Instead of jealously asserting the rights of the Church mission to land, or intermeddling respecting purchases from the natives, he has confined himself strictly to the duties of his calling as a missionary. He has brought about a permanent peace between the Ngatiawa Tribe and the fierce Ngatiraukawas, whom he has Christianized, and has devoted himself to the spiritual and medical charge of the native and white population, who occupy a coast-line of fifty miles, besides making occasional and harassing visits across the strait to the Southern Island. His health has suffered much from this service. He has always refrained from, and, it is understood, has declined, any interference in the secular affairs of the natives otherwise than by recommending a peaceful intercourse with their white neighbours upon all occasions.” From this it will be seen that the labours of Mr. Hadfield must undoubtedly have had a most beneficial effect upon the progress of the company's settlers during the first three years after their establishment in this district. This short account of the first systematic effort at colonisation in the southern districts of this Island will no doubt convey to you some idea of the difficulties which the settlers had to overcome; but those difficulties were rendered all the