12. (See page 36.)

Heké Burning Kororareka.—" Honé Heké, a distinguished missionary chief of the Bay of Islands, had long driven a thriving trade amid the lawless colonisers of Kororareka—bartering his pigs, potatoes, peaches, slave-girls, and native produce, with whalers and traders for powder, guns, blankets, knicknacks and tobacco. The hoisting of the British flag at Kororareka, the introduction of some; law, the imposition of customs duties, had sadly crippled this thriving trade, and driven to other shores many of the fishing freebooters who had long revelled on the beach. With the ships, went Heké's income. His mark to this Waitangi Treaty had created him a British subject-but it had created Customs, stopped the pig trade, and made beauty a drug. The British flag-staff symbolised the Customs, He cut it down. Smitten on the one cheek. Governor Fitzroy turned the other. By stroke of pen he abolished Customs throughout New Zealand; when Heké, at the entreaty of his spiritual advisers, sent a note of apology. But whalers did not instantly come back—they had not heard of Customs' sudden death. Heké was impatient; he cut the flag-staff down a second time. Missionary authorities remonstrated and set it up once, this time as they tell us, "sheathed with iron"—but not with majesty. Heke cut it down a third time; then burnt down the town and drove the inhabitants to Auckland. Heké, almost an elder of the church, a chief, as a missionary author tells us, "distinguished for his knowledge of the Scriptures," actually burning down his Queen's towns! slaying and harrying Her Majesty's white subjects Well might the missionary officials of the Privy Council exclaim, "et tu brute!" They offered £100 for his head. Hoké at once replied by offering 1000 acres of land for the governor's head—a high price, but Heke was always a liberal savage. Soldiers were brought over from Sydney; natives, old tribe foes of Heké, delighted to cross tomahawks with him once more, were enlisted as allies, and war burst out. Having long coddled our convert we had now to thrash him."—Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South."