nt on such people was the fear of retaliation, and the
consequence was, that often a dare-devil savage would run a long career
of murder, robbery, and outrage, before meeting with a check, simply
from the terror he inspired, and the "luck" which often accompanies
outrageous daring. At a time, however, and in a country like New
Zealand, where every man was a fighting man or nothing, these
desperadoes, sooner or later, came to grief; being at last invariably
shot, or run through the body, by some sturdy freeholder, whose rights
they had invaded.

I had two friends staying with me, young men who had come to see me
from the neighbouring colonies, and to take a summer tour in New
Zealand; and it so happened that no less than three times during my
absence from home, and when I had taken almost all my people along with
me, my castle had been invaded by one of the most notorious ruffians
who had ever been an impersonation of, or lived by, the law of force.
This interesting specimen of the _genus homo_ had, on the last of these
visits, demanded that my friends should hand over to him one pair of
blankets; but as the prospectus he produced, with respect to payment,
was not at all satisfactory, my friends declined to enter into the
speculation, the more particularly as the blankets were mine. Our
freebooting acquaintance then, to explain his views more clearly,
knocked both my friends down; threatened to kill them both with his
tomahawk; then rushed into the bedroom, dragged out all the bedclothes,
and burnt them on the kitchen fire.

This last affair was rather displeasing to me. I held to the theory
that every Englishman's house was his castle, and was moreover rather
savage at my guests having been so roughly handled. In fact I began to
feel that, though I had up to this time managed to hold my own pretty
well, I was at last in danger of falling under the imposition of "black
mail," and losing my _status_ as an independent potentate--a
_rangatira_ of the first water. I then and there declared loudly that
it was well for the offender that I had not been at home, and that if
ever he tried his tricks with _me_ he would find out his mistake. These
declarations of war, I perceived, were heard by my men in a sort of
incredulous silence (silence in New Zealand gives _dis_-sent), and
though the fellows were stout chaps who would not mind a row with any
ordinary mortal, I verily believe they would have all run at the first
appearance