Being a man of military training he prepared for a desperate siege, and
this so effectively, that I believe he had, on learning the real state of
matters, to escape the fire by crawling through the window.
Afterwards, the Governor had a critic the fewer, of his olive branch to
the Maoris.
X 'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN
Night and morning in the far south were vividly reflected to Sir George
Grey in tales of Rauparaha and Rangihaeta, Maori chieftains, and of
Siapo, Loyalty Islander.
Before his arrival in New Zealand, the Maoris had been divorced from
their cannibal practices. Yet, the horrid traffic was not remote, if he
were to accept a lasting rumour of Rauparaha and Rangihaeta. The pair
were making their own war stir for him, and must be tackled. It was
earlier that, sitting on a hillside in friendly converse, they sent a
slave girl for a pail of water. As she tripped off to do their bidding,
Rauparaha, the story was, shot her through the back for a meal. No doubt
cannibalism among the Maoris had thriven on the absence of animal meat,
for New Zealand was peculiar in that respect. Its one large creature of
the lower world was the moa, of which Sir George said 'It was akin to the
ostrich, but no European, I believe, ever saw it alive.'
Governor Grey and Bishop Selwyn were out together on a walking
expedition, and it was Easter Sunday.
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