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form for Taveha, and for Hakiro, and for other chiefs to make their running speeches in, & la Nouvelle-Zélande.
Hakiro (son of Tarcha, but who on this oceasion appeared and spoke on behalf of Titore,* deceased, prin- cipal chicf of the Ngatinanenane Tribe) arose and said, “To thee, O Governor! this. Who says ‘Sit’? Who? Hear me, O Governor! I say, no, no. Sit, indeed ! Who says ‘Sit’? Go back, go back; do not thou sit here. What wilt thou sit here for? We are not thy people. We are free. We will not have a Governor.’ Return, return; leave us. ‘The missionaries and Busby are our fathers. We do not want thee; so go back, return, walk away.”
Tareha, chief of the Ngatirehia Tribe, rose, and, with much of their usual national gesticnlation, said, ‘‘ No Governor for me—for us Native men. We, we only are the chiefs, rulers. We will not be ruled over. What ! thou, a foreigner, up, and I down! ‘Thou high, and I, Tareha, the great chic of the Ngapuhi tribes, low! No, no; never, never. I am jealous of thee; I am, and shall be, until thou and thy ship go away. Go back, go back; thou shalt not stay here. No, no; I will never say ‘Yes” Stay! Alas! whatfor? why? Whatis there here for thee? Our lands are already all gone. Yes, it is so, but our names remam. Never mind; what of that—the lands of our fathers alienated ? Dost thou think we are poor, indigent, poverty-stricken—that we really need thy foreign garments, thy food? Lo! note this.” (Here he held up high a bundle of fern-roots he
- T may here briefly state, in a note, that Titore was one of the most
powerful and best of the many Ngapuhi chiefs of high rank—so much of Nature’s true nobility of manner and appearance about him; his voice, too, was mild, yet firm, possessing more of the seaviter than the fortiier, so contrary to the usual loud bluster of the Maori, especially of those chiefs residing on the shores of the harbour, whose mannevs were not improved through their common intercourse with shipping and low-class whites. Thad visited him on his death-bed (he died comparatively carly, from con- sumption), and, though he was not a Christian, I was much pleased with his demeanour. Our parting was a mournful yet very affectionate one. There is a yery fair likeness of him (there called ‘* Tetoro”) given asa frontispiece in Captain Cruise’s ‘Ten Months’ Residence: in New Zea- land,” taken before the invention of photography.
