it was the outcome of the havoc wrought by the musket, and the growing fear thereof.  Nearly all the tribes had now obtained firearms.  A war had ceased to be an agreeable shooting-party for some one chief with an unfair advantage over his rivals.  A balance of power, or at any rate an equality of risk, made for peace.  But it would be unjust to overlook the missionaries’ share in bringing about comparative tranquillity.  Throughout all the wars of the musket, and the dread slaughter and confusion they brought about, most of the teachers held on.  They laboured for peace, and at length those to whom they spoke began to cease to make themselves ready unto the battle.  In the worst of times no missionary’s life was taken.  The Wesleyans at Whangaroa did indeed, in 1827, lose all but life.  But the sack of their station was but an instance of the law of Muru.  Missionaries were then regarded as Hongi’s dependants.  When he was wounded they were plundered, as he himself was more than once when misfortune befel him.  In the wars of Te Waharoa, the mission-stations of Rotorua and Matamata were stripped, but no blood was shed.  The Wesleyans set up again at Hokianga.  Everywhere the teachers were allowed to preach, to intercede, to protest.  At last, in 1838, the extraordinary spectacle was seen of Rauparaha’s son going from Kapiti to the Bay of Islands to beg that a teacher might come to his father’s tribe; and accordingly, in 1839, Octavius Hadfield, afterwards primate, took his life in his hand and his post at a spot on the mainland opposite to the elder Rauparaha’s island den of rapine.  By 1840 the Maoris, if they had not beaten their spears into pruning hooks, had more than one old gun-barrel hung up at the gable-end of a meeting-house to serve when beaten upon as a gong for church-goers.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Taylor’s New Zealand, Past and Present.]

By this time there were in the islands perhaps two thousand Whites, made up of four classes—­first, the missionaries; second, the Pakeha Maoris; third, the whalers and sealers chiefly found in the South Island; and fourth, the traders and nondescripts settled in the Bay of Islands.  Of the last-named beautiful haven it was truly said that every prospect pleased, that only man was vile, and that he was very vile indeed.  On one of its beaches, Kororareka—­now called Russell—­formed a sort of Alsatia.  As many as a thousand Whites lived there at times.  On one occasion thirty-five large whaling ships were counted as they lay off its beach in the bay.  The crews of these found among the rum-shops and Maori houris of Kororareka a veritable South Sea Island paradise.  The Maori chiefs of the neighbourhood shared their orgies, pandered to their vices, and grew rich thereby.  An occasional murder reminded the Whites that Maori forbearance was limited.