suggestion of a Yankee whaling-skipper.  H.M.S. Alligator signalised the hoisting of the ensign with a salute of twenty-one guns.  After this impressive solemnity, Mr. Busby lived at the bay for six years.  His career was a prolonged burlesque—­a farce without laughter, played by a dull actor in serious earnest.  Personally he went through as strange an experience as has often fallen to the lot of a British official.  A man of genius might possibly have managed the inhabitants of his Alsatia.  But governments have no right to expect genius in unsupported officials—­even when they pay them L300 a year.  Mr. Busby was a well-meaning, small-minded person, anxious to justify his appointment.  His Alsatians did not like him, and complained that his manners were exclusive and his wit caustic.  Probably this meant nothing more than that he declined to join in their drinking-bouts.  His life, however, had its own excitements.  A chief whom he had offended tried to shoot him.  Crouching one night in the verandah of the resident’s cottage, he fired at the shadow of Mr. Busby’s head as it appeared on the window-blind.  As he merely hit the shadow, not the substance, the would-be assassin was not punished, but the better disposed Maoris gave a piece of land as compensation—­not to the injured Busby, but to his Government.

It has been well said of Mr. Busby that “his office resembled a didactic dispatch; it sounded well, and it did nothing else.”  Nevertheless, New Zealand was in a state such that, from time to time, even the English Government had to do something, so urgent was the need for action.  After despatching their man-of-war without guns, they next year sent a man-of-war with guns.  Nor did the captain of the Alligator confine himself to the harmless nonsense of saluting national flags.  In 1834 the brig Harriet was wrecked on the coast of Taranaki.  Her master, Guard, an ex-convict, made his way to Sydney, asserting that the Maoris had flocked down after the wreck, and attacked and plundered the crew; had killed some, and held Guard’s wife and children in captivity.  As a matter of fact, it was the misconduct of his own men which had brought on the fighting, and even to his Sydney hearers it was obvious that his tale was not wholly true.  But the main facts were correct.  There had been a wreck and plunder; there were captives.  The Alligator was at once sent with soldiers to the scene of the disaster to effect the rescue of the prisoners by friendly and pacific means.  Arrived on the scene, the captain sent his only two interpreters on shore to negotiate.  They were Guard himself and a lying billiard-marker from Kororareka.  They promised the natives ransom—­a keg of gunpowder—­if the captives were released; an offer which was at once accepted.  They did not tell the captain of their promise, and he, most unwisely, refused to give the natives anything.  All the captives were at once given up except the woman and the children,