Yet this little burlesque was destined to have its share in hastening the appearance of England on the scene.  Thierry had tried to enlist the sympathies of the French Government.  So also had another Frenchman, Langlois, the captain of a whaling ship, who professed to have bought 300,000 acres of land from the natives of Banks Peninsula in the South Island.  Partly owing to his exertions, a French company called “The Nanto-Bordelaise Company” was incorporated, the object of which was to found a French colony on the shores of the charming harbour of Akaroa, on the land said to have been purchased by Langlois.  In this company Louis Philippe was a shareholder.  In 1837, also, the Catholic missionary Pompallier was dispatched to New Zealand to labour among the Maoris.  Such were the sea-routes of that day that it took him some twelve months voyaging amid every kind of hardship and discomfort to reach his journey’s end.  In New Zealand the fact that he showed Thierry some consideration, and that he and his Catholic workers in the mission-field were not always on the best of terms with their Protestant competitors, aroused well-founded suspicions that the French had their eye upon New Zealand.  The English missionaries were now on the horns of a dilemma.  They did not want a colony, but if there was to be annexation, the English flag would, of course, be far preferable.

Moreover, a fresh influence had caused the plot to thicken, and was also making for annexation.  This was the appearance on the scene of the “land-sharks”—­shrewd adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides.  Most of the purchases were either altogether fictitious, or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices.  Many of the deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, “no consideration specified”!  A hundred acres were bought for a farthing.  Boundaries were inserted after signature.  Some land was bought several times over.  No less than eight purchasers claimed the whole or part of Kapiti Island.  The whole South Island was the subject of one professed sale by half a dozen natives in Sydney.  Certain purchased blocks were airily defined by latitude and longitude.  On the other hand, the Maoris often played the game in quite the same spirit, selling land which they did not own, or had no power to dispose of, again and again.  In some cases diamond cut diamond.  In others both sides were playing a part, and neither cared for the land to pass.  The land-shark wanted a claim with which to harass others; the Maori signed a worthless document on receipt of a few goods.  By 1840 it was estimated that, outside the sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000 acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks.  The claims arising out of these