[Footnote] Axe made of greenstone.

Some honest people in England heard of the good things to be had in New Zealand, formed a company, and landed near the mouth of the Hokianga River to form a settlement.  The natives happened to be at war, and were performing a war dance.  The new company looked on while the natives danced, and then all desire for land in New Zealand faded from their hearts.  They returned on board their ship and sailed away, having wasted twenty thousand pounds.  Such people should remain in their native country.  Your true rover, lay or clerical, comes for something or other, and stays to get it, or dies.

After twenty years of labour, and an expenditure of two hundred thousand pounds, the missionaries claimed only two thousand converts, and these were Christians merely in name.  In 1825 the Rev. Henry Williams said the natives were as insensible to redemption as brutes, and in 1829 the Methodists in England contemplated withdrawing their establishment for want of success.

The Catholic Bishop Pompallier, with two priests, landed at Hokianga on January 10th, 1838, and took up his residence at the house of an Irish Catholic named Poynton, who was engaged in the timber trade.  Poynton was a truly religious man, who had been living for some time among the Maoris.  He was desirous of marrying the daughter of a chief, but he wished that she should be a Christian, and, as there was no Catholic priest nearer than Sydney, he sailed to that port with the chief and his daughter, called on Bishop Polding, and informed him of the object of his visit.  A course of instruction was given to the father and daughter, Poynton acting as interpreter; they were baptised, and the marriage took place.  After the lapse of sixty years their descendents were found to have retained the faith, and were living as good practical Catholics.

Bishop Pompallier celebrated his first Mass on January 13th, 1838, and the news of his arrival was soon noised abroad and discussed.  The Methodist missionaries considered the action of the bishop as an unwarrantable intrusion on their domain, and, being Protestants, they resolved to protest.  This they did through the medium of thirty native warriors, who appeared before Poynton’s house early in the morning of January 22nd, when the bishop was preparing to say Mass.  The chief made a speech.  He said the bishop and his priests were enemies to the Maoris.  They were not traders, for they had brought no guns, no axes.  They had been sent by a foreign chief (the Pope) to deprive the Maoris of their land, and make them change their old customs.  Therefore he and his warriors had come to break the crucifix, and the ornaments of the altar, and to take the bishop and his priests to the river.

The bishop replied that, although he was not a trader, he had come as a friend, and did not wish to deprive them of their country or anything belonging to them.  He asked them to wait a while, and if they could find him doing the least injury to anyone they could take him to the river.  The warriors agreed to wait, and went away.