Proud and stubborn, brave to recklessness, they naturally became jealous of the gradually extending occupation of their land by the encroaching white race. But why should such a people not be sensitive, even to the madness of battle, against overwhelming odds? They had won their country from the deep, traversing wide wastes of waters in canoes but ill adapted for storm and tempest. They had discovered this fair region—cultivated, peopled it. Why should they not resist a foreign occupation to the death? And as he looked around on the magnificent prospect spread before, around, he could not help recalling the lines of the immortal bard—
"Where's the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land?"
Returning to his hotel, he chanced to meet several groups of this much-exploited people, and was much impressed by the stalwart frames and bold, independent bearing of the men.
Many of the women, too, were handsome, and among the half-caste girls and young men were forms and faces which would have compared favourably with the finest models of ancient Greece. One young man of that colour attracted his attention. He had been reading on board ship that wonderful romance of Michael Scott's, wherein the spacious times of old, and the planter-life of the West Indian Islands, are limned with such prodigality of colour, such wealth of humorous perception, such power of pathos. As this young man came swinging along with a companion down the street, cigar in mouth, he could not help saying to himself, "There's the young pirate captain out of 'Tom Cringle's Log.'" He was taller even than that fascinating Spanish desperado, but there was a strong family likeness.
"What a man he is!" thought Massinger. "Six feet three or four, if an inch, broad-shouldered, deep-chested—a wondrous combination of strength and activity; supple as a panther, with the muscle of a Farnese Hercules. As to his features, the eyes and teeth are splendid, the complexion a clear bronze, hardly darker than that of Southern Europe."
Altogether he doubted if he had ever seen such a remarkable masculine specimen of personal grace and beauty. "This is truly a remarkable country," he soliloquized. "If the climate and soil can raise men like this, what may not be hoped from the introduction of a purely British race, with all the modern advantages of civilization?"
Thus pondering, he managed to discover his hotel, where he set himself resolutely to sketch out a plan of future operation, before completing which, he deemed it advisable to deliver some of the letters of introduction with which he had been plentifully supplied. One of the more immediate effects of this action was the outflow of an inordinate quantity of advice, from the recipients of which, as a newly arrived Englishman, he was deemed to be in urgent need.
These exhortations were compendious and exhaustive, but failed in effect upon him from their very affluence, so much of the suggestive information being in direct contrast to that which immediately preceded it.
Having admitted that he intended to purchase a large block of land for farm and grazing purposes, it was astonishing how much interest he excited among the mercantile or pastoral magnates to whom he had been accredited.
"Have nothing to do with that infernal New Zealand Company," said one grizzled colonist, "or you'll never cease to regret it. They're all in the same boat with certain British members of Parliament and the local political gang, to rob these poor devils of natives of their tribal lands. Title? They haven't a rag. Some artful devil of a Maori—and they are not behindhand in that line—pretends to sell the lands of his tribe, for a few barrels of gunpowder or cases of Yankee axes—of course signs a bogus deed."