the seat of
government, and is always likely to remain so. But it was an almost
criminal error on the part of the Company to plump down its settlers
in districts that were occupied and certain to be stubbornly held by
warlike natives. Nearly the whole of the South Island had no human
occupants. Shut off by the Kaikoura mountains from the more dangerous
tribes, the east and south-east of that island lay open to the first
comer. Moreover, the country there was not only fertile, but in
large part treeless, and therefore singularly suited for rapid and
profitable settlement. It is quite easy to see now that had the New
Zealand Company begun its first operations there, a host of failures
and troubles would have been avoided. The settlement of the North
Island should not have been begun until after an understanding had
been come to with the Imperial authorities and missionaries, and on a
proper and legal system of land purchase. This and other things the
Company might have found out if it had taken early steps to do so. The
truth is that the first occupation of New Zealand was rushed, and,
like everything else that is done in a hurry, it was in part done very
badly.

So little was known or thought of the South Island that sovereignty
was not proclaimed over it until four months after the Governor's
arrival in the north, and even then the royal flag was not hoisted
there. The consequence was a narrow escape from an attempt by the
French to plant a colony at Akaroa in Banks Peninsula. The French
frigate _L'Aube_ put in at the Bay of Islands in July, 1840, bound for
the south. Her captain, hospitably entertained by Hobson, let fall
some incautious words about the object of his voyage. Hobson took the
alarm, and promptly dispatched the _Britomart_ to hoist the English
flag at Akaroa. Thanks to bad weather, the _Britomart_ only reached
the threatened port a few days before the Frenchmen. Then it was found
that an emigrant ship, with a number of French settlers, was coming
with all the constituent parts of a small colony. The captain of
_L'Aube_, finding himself forestalled, good-humouredly made the best
of it. A number of the immigrants did indeed land. Some of them were
afterwards taken away to the Marquesas Islands in the South Seas:
others remained permanently settled at Akaroa. There around a bay,
still called French Bay, they planted vineyards and built cottages in
a fashion having some pathetic reminiscences of rural France