Savage gives a short notice of a European who was living in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands when he was there in 1805.  This person, whose native country, or the circumstances that had induced him to take up his abode where he then was, Savage could not discover, shunned all intercourse with Europeans, and was wont to retire to the interior whenever a ship approached the coast.  The natives, however, whose customs and manners he had adopted, spoke well of him; and Savage often saw a New Zealand woman who lived with him, and one of their children, which he represents as very far from exhibiting any superiority either in mind or person over his associates of unmixed breed.  Its complexion was the same as that of the others, being distinguished from them only by its light flaxen hair.

Marsden, also, in a letter written in 1813 to the secretary of the Church Missionary Society, mentions a young man, a native of America, with whom he had conversed in New South Wales, and who had lived for above a year with the New Zealanders.

During all this time these savages, he said, had shown him the greatest attention, and he would have been very glad to return to live among them if he could have found any other Europeans to go with him.

Since the Bay of Islands has become so much the resort of shipping, many seamen have left their ships and taken up their residence of their own accord among the natives.  The “Missionary Reports” state that, about the close of the year 1824, there were perhaps twenty men who had thus found their way into the country, and were living on plunder; and that within the year not less, it was supposed, than a hundred sailors had in the same manner taken refuge for a time in the island.

Although these men had all run away from their own ships, the captains of other vessels touching at any part of the coast did not hesitate to employ them when they wanted hands.

Mawman, whom Rutherford met with at Kiperra, had, it will be recollected, made his escape, according to his own account, from a sloop of war.  These fugitives, however, it would appear, do not always succeed in establishing themselves among the natives.  Cruise mentions one who, having run away from the “Anne” whaler, hid himself at first in the woods, but soon after came on board the “Dromedary” in a most miserable state, beseeching to be taken on the strength of the ship.

Convicts, too, occasionally make their escape to New Zealand, and attempt to secrete themselves in the interior of the country.  When the “Active” was at the Bay of Islands in 1815, two men and a woman of this description were sent on board to be taken back to New South Wales.  The woman, Nicholas says, was particularly dejected on being retaken; and it was found that while on shore she had done everything in her power to prevail upon one of the native females to assist her in her attempt to conceal herself.  Her friend, however, resisted all her entreaties; and well knowing the hardships to which the poor creature would have exposed herself, only replied to her importunate solicitations, “Me would, Mary, but me got no tea, me got no sugar, no bed, no good things for you; me grieve to see you, you cannot live like New Zealand woman, you cannot sleep on the ground.”