. There
they used to be visited from time to time by French men-of-war; but
they gave no trouble to any one, and their children, by removal or
intermarriage, became blended with the English population which in
later days surrounded them.

Captain Hobson had to choose a capital. After throwing away much good
money at Russell in the Bay of Islands, he saw that he must come
further south. A broader-minded man might have gone at once to
Wellington, and planted himself boldly amongst the English settlers.
But the prejudice of the officials and the advice of the missionaries
combined with Hobson's own peculiar views of the Cook's Straits
colonists, to keep him in the north. From his despatches it is clear
that he regarded the immigrants in the south--one of the finest bodies
of settlers that ever left England--as dangerous malcontents of
anarchical tendencies. As he would not go to Wellington and take his
natural position at the head of the main English colony and at
the centre of New Zealand, he did the next best thing in going to
Auckland. In pitching upon the Waitemata isthmus he made so good a
choice that his name is likely to be remembered therefore as long as
New Zealand lasts. By founding the city of Auckland he not only took
up a strategic position which cut the Maori tribes almost in half, but
selected a very fine natural trading centre. The narrow neck of land
on which Auckland stands between the winding Waitemata on the east and
the broader Manu-kau Harbour on the west, will, before many years, be
overspread from side to side by a great mercantile city. The unerring
eye of Captain Cook had, seventy years before, noted the Hauraki Gulf
as an admirable position. Hobson's advisers, in choosing it as his
seat of Government, are said to have been the missionary, Henry
Williams, and Captain Symonds, a surveyor. As the capital of New
Zealand it was the wrong place from the first. From every other
standpoint the selection was a master-stroke. Twenty-four years later
Auckland ceased to be the capital of the Colony; but though in this
she had to yield to the superior claims of Wellington, she could
afford to lose the privilege. First in size and beauty, she is to-day
second to no other New Zealand city in prosperity and progress.

In 1841, however, by way of making as bad a start as possible, little
Auckland began with a land boom. Forty-four acres were sold at auction
by the Government for L24,275. Small suburban lots a f