Another instance, and another incident, lie in the conversion of Rangihaeta to road-making.  He had rushed to the rescue of Rauparaha, on hearing of his capture.  It was the chivalrous daring of one chief, towards the brother in distress, but unavailing.  Not a hair of anybody’s head had been hurt, yet Rauparaha was already beyond his friend’s reach.  Rangihaeta sulked into his own fastnesses—­a rumble of discontent and vengeance.  Sir George did not wish him to remain in a state holding so little happiness.  Moreover, the all-important high roads must invade even Rangihaeta’s territory.  Diplomatic overtures were not wasted; they blossomed quietly, and then bloomed on an inspiration.

‘When the old fellow had begun to get frail and ill,’ said Sir George, ’I sent him a pretty pony and trap.  The sea shore, at his part of New Zealand, offered a splendid stretch of firm sand, one of the finest drives in the world.  Delighted with his carriage, he would use it; only a breadth of rough land intervened between his pa and the beach.  He could not drive across it, so what does he do but turn out his men to make a roadway.

’There was merriment in Maoriland at the idea that Rangihaeta, hitherto sternly opposed to our roads, should himself be constructing one.  That was as I had hoped, and he made no more difficulties for us.  How could he?  There he was, almost every afternoon, driving on the sands in all the pride of peacock feathers.  Not merely that, but he aired his sister Topera, a woman of first-rate abilities, and of wide influence among the Maoris.’

Meanwhile, an outbreak at Wanganui furnished Sir George with material for his administrative wits.  He was strolling up and down, deep in meditation, on a sort of terrace at his residence in Auckland.  Turning, he noticed a Maori running towards him, and the next moment the Maori was rubbing his nose against the Governor’s, the native fashion of salute.

Sir George, himself, had raced one of the fleetest members of a Maori tribe, throwing off his coat to do it, and proving the victor.  ’I was somewhere on the coast, with several of my officers and a number of Maori chiefs, and there was a debate as to running.  I ventured the statement that I could, perhaps, beat the Maoris at a distance contest.  They selected their best man, a young chief, and I fancy it took me more than half a mile to get away from him.’

Those civilities were very well in their place, but the Governor would have dispensed with the nose rubbing of the native at his doorstep, so anxious was he to learn the reason.  There was news in the man’s face, and when he gathered words, it proved to be that of the Wanganui outbreak.

A spark there, had been the going off, by mishap, of a midshipmite’s pistol.  The lad was toying with it, amusing himself and a Maori chief.  ‘Look here, old fellow!’ he had exclaimed, and to his own amazement the pistol went bang, hurting the chief in the face.