The Company presently turned their attention to the Middle Island, and there decided upon two hundred thousand acres of land bordering Tasman Bay and its neighbourhood. The lots were eagerly bought in England; Captain Arthur Wakefield, R.N., a brother of the tactful Colonel, was appointed commander of the expedition and resident agent, and two shiploads of emigrants sailed for the new settlement, which was to be named Nelson.
While these preliminaries were being arranged, more immigrants arrived at Taranaki, or New Plymouth, the "Garden of New Zealand," where the Company claimed ownership of sixty miles of coast by a stretch of twenty miles inland. We saw this place when we stood with Te Turi and his followers and gazed from afar at the snowpeak of Mount Egmont. Hither, too, came Hongi and his conquering Nga-Puhi and, after him, Waikato's champion, Te Wherowhero of the red robe, who between them made an end of the men of Taranaki, enslaving those they left alive.
Even while the new arrivals were parcelling out the land and grumbling at the lack of a good harbour, back came the manumitted slaves, ancient owners of Taranaki, and stood aghast to see what changes time had wrought. Their feeble protest availed them nothing. Whether the Company had purchased the land or not, Governor Hobson now owned it under the Crown's right of preemption, and the poor men of Taranaki were forced to hide their twice diminished heads.
The ships bound for the Middle Island had by this time arrived at Wellington, whence, after some delay, the immigrants were carried across the strait to Tasman Bay. The native chiefs courteously received them; but, when Captain Wakefield promised gifts as soon as the land bought by the Colonel should be occupied, the Maori stood silent. Had they said aught, it would probably have been a Maori version of Timemus exules, et dona ferentes.
However, they professed to welcome the white men; whereupon the agent smiled, the anxious would-be settlers cheered, surveyors were landed, and the town of Nelson was founded on the 1st of February, 1842.
Do you who read remember how, when Hongi pressed him hard, Te Rauparaha of the Ngati-Toa fled headlong with his tribe along a path of blood to the south, and how he crossed the strait, and burned and slew and ate? He is still a force to be reckoned with, this Te Rauparaha. He is getting on in years, and lives with his tribe in the neighbourhood of Otaki on the west, north of Wellington. But he can look thence across the strait towards the lands he conquered not so long ago, and dissentingly shakes his head as the Nelson-bound ships pass on their way, while he openly expresses his disgust at the coming of so many more Pakeha.
As Captain Wakefield parted from the little warrior-diplomatist with the twinkling eyes and broad forehead, no prophetic vision came to him of the fearful scene to be enacted a year later in the valley of the Wairau, when the price of the land was to be exacted in blood—his own.
As at Wellington, as at Whanganui, as at Taranaki, so at Nelson disputes soon began between Maori and colonist, the theme being ever the ownership of the land. Words led to blows, blows to sullen mutterings of utu and, so far as the Company's settlers were concerned, it seemed as if harmonious intercourse and continued agreement with the natives were outside the range of possible things.