ral
labourers, their lot would have been easy enough. Unfortunately for
them, one had been a London tailor, the other a shoemaker, and the
luckless pair of feeble Cockneys could be of little use to their
taskmasters. These led them such a life that they tried running away
once more, and lived for a time in a cave, subsisting chiefly on
fern-root. A period of this diet, joined to their ever-present fear
of being found out and killed, drove them back to Maori slavery. From
this they finally escaped to the _Active_--more like walking spectres
than men, says an eye-witness--and resigned, if needs must, to endure
once more the tender mercies of convict life in Botany Bay.

More valuable whites were admitted into the tribes, and married to
one, sometimes two or three, wives. The relatives of these last
occasionally resorted to an effectual method of securing their
fidelity by tattooing them. One of them, John Rutherford, survived and
describes the process. But as he claims to have had his face and part
of his body thoroughly tattooed in four hours, his story is but one
proof amongst a multitude that veracity was not a needful part of the
equipment of the New Zealand adventurer of the Alsatian epoch. Once
enlisted, the _Pakehas_ were expected to distinguish themselves in the
incessant tribal wars. Most of them took their share of fighting with
gusto. As trade between whites and Maoris grew, each tribe made a
point of having a white agent-general, called their _Pakeha_ Maori
(Foreigner Maorified), to conduct their trade and business with his
fellows. He was the tribe's vassal, whom they petted and plundered as
the mood led them, but whom they protected against outsiders. These
gentry were for the most part admirably qualified to spread the vices
of civilization and discredit its precepts. But, illiterate ruffians
as most of them were, they had their uses in aiding peaceful
intercourse between the races. Some, too, were not illiterate. A
Shakespeare and a Lempriere were once found in the possession of a
chief in the wildest part of the interior. They had belonged to his
_Pakeha_ long since dead. Elsewhere a tattered prayer-book was shown
as the only relic of another. One of the kind, Maning by name, who
lived with a tribe on the beautiful inlet of Hokianga, will always be
known as _the_ Pakeha Maori. He was an Irish adventurer, possessed not
only of uncommon courage and acuteness, but of real literary talent
and a genial and ch