CHAPTER VIII.
"A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS" "Under his office treason was no crime; The sons of Belial had a glorious time." _Dryden_.
Between 1830 and 1840, then, New Zealand had drifted into a new phase of existence.

Instead of being an unknown land, peopled by ferocious cannibals, to whose shores ship-captains gave as wide a berth as possible, she was now a country with a white element and a constant trade.

Missionaries were labouring, not only along the coasts, but in many districts of the interior, and, as the decade neared its end, a large minority of the natives were being brought under the influence of Christianity.

The tribal wars were dying down.

Partly, this was a peace of exhaustion, in some districts of solitude; partly, it was the outcome of the havoc wrought by the musket, and the growing fear thereof.