59

G—3.

Laura Gascoigne, Cecil Gascoigne, Louisa Gascoigne, John Milne, and Edward Richard. Te AVetere says that frequent warnings had beeu given to the White Cliffs people to leave, but they did not heed them. The party went out to kill them, having been instigated from "Waikato and other parts. After the Gascoignes and the others had been killed, the Eev. Mr. AVhiteley, an old Wesleyan missionary, was seen coming, and Te AVetere (Wesley) called out not to touch him, but he says the blood of the Maoris was up. AVetere states that ho ran away when he heard one shot, and then there were several shots. He denies that he was in any way responsible for the killing of Mr. Whiteley. It will be remembered that Te Wetere was brought in here from Mokau, when Sir G-eorge Grey was last in New Plymouth, by Mr. Jones, an enterprising man, who has lately settled at Mokau. So far as the parliamentary papers are concerned, ho is still sot down as the actual murderer of Mr. Whiteley. AVaitaba. There are a good number of houses at Waitara. The steamer "Hauraki" comes into the river> and schooners from the Grey with coal, but the entrance to it is not a good one. If the New Plymouth people build the proposed breakwater, and so make a good harbour, all the trade will go there. If not, this district will have to be content with railways to Auckland and Wellington. I was rather disappointed with the cultivation of the country between New Plymouth and Waitara. I am told this is owing to pieces of Native land along the road, and that this again is owing to the mismanagement of the Native Office people. The land is good, and I am informed that on the north side of the Waitara Eiver it is exceedingly fine ; indeed, as everybody knows, Taranaki is claimed to be the garden of New Zealand. To show how this province has been kept back, and what associations surround the district of the Waitara, I may state some of the incidents connected with a celebrated feud : Eawiriri determined to sell a piece of land, and was opposed by Katatore. Bawiriri went with a party to cut the lines of the block. Katatore and a party fired upon them, killing Rawiriri and a number of his people. Eawiriri was in the commission of the peace, and, as he was the chief of the Natives who were willing to sell land, the Government were urged to proceed against the murderers. Nothing was done, however. Then, at the instigation of Ihaia, a Native killed another named Eimene. Several fights took place immediately after, and during a series of skirmishes sixty men were killed, and one hundred wounded. Then Katatore was waylaid and murdered by a party set on by Ihaia. AVIEEMU KINGI TE EANGITIKE. There will be great disappointment if the famous chief William King does not attend the meeting It will deprive it of a good deal of eclat and impressiveness, as having present at this place of meeting at Waitara the man who first took up arms against us there. But when Sir George Grey arrives he will probably manage to induce the old chief to make au effort to come down from the secluded place where he has resided since the war, even if he has to be carried down in a litter. Just before the Taranaki war, and during its continuance, nothing was too bad to say of William King. Governors and Ministers held him in special abhorrence, and every Taranaki settler looked upon him as the sole obstacle to the progress of the settlement and the personal prosperity of every man in it. In looking through the old records, therefore, we find them full of abuse of William King ; but the time has now come for writing history. William King belongs to the Ngatiawa Tribe, and was born at Waitara early in the present century. When the Waikatos first invaded Taranaki, William King went to Kapiti, in Wellington Province, where he lived with Eauparaha. When the agents of the New Zealand Company commenced to buy land in Cook Strait, AVilliam King, then called Te Wheto, strongly urged the Maoris to sell land. When resident at Wailcanae, William King was baptized by the present Bishop of Wellington. After the massacre at the Wairau, in Nelson Province, William King, who then resided at Waikanae, had a thousand armed men ready to defend Wellington, and but for him Wellington would have been attacked in 184(5-47. He joined his forces to our troops, and was stated to have been chiefly the means of Bangihaetu being defeated. In 1847 he and his people began to make preparations for a return to Waitara, which they had always yearned for as their home. The climate of Cook Strait was not so good, and the Maoris could hardly get humaras to grow there, whereas they flourish luxuriantly on the fertile and warm soil of Waitara. At length Potatau invited William King, who was related to the Waikatos through an ancestor, to return to Waitara. Governor Grey was seriously alarmed at the expressed intention of AVilliam King and his people to return to AVaitara, and it appears at one time to have been contemplated to endeavour to stop the movement by armed force. Governor Grey, with that prescience which has always distinguished him, saw the danger of William King occupying Waitara. He saw that he could not possibly prevent the immigration, and he proposed that William King should settle on the north bank of the river, and should relinquish all pretensions to any land on the south bank. AVilliam King, I believe, actually agreed to some terms of that kind; but he does not seem to have carried them out, as he took up his residence on the south bank of the river. In 1854 AVilliam King and his people possessed, in addition to considerable sums of money, 150 horses, 300 head of cattle, 40 carts, 35 ploughs, 20 pairs of harrows, 3 winnowing machines, and 10 wooden houses. William King, however, now took up the auti-land-selling movement. About 1857 a meeting was called at Manopotu, where a building was erected named TaiporiJienue, or, the great evil, being the selling of land to the Europeans. There the anti-land-selling league was inaugurated. AVhen fighting began AVilliam King ceased to be active. He was not a warrior, or a general, leaving all that business to Apuroua, his fighting chief. Indeed he went to AVaikato and lived there, and Te AVetini Taiporutu, and a party of AVaikatos went to fight at Taranaki. Since the war AVilliam King has lived chiefly at Ngatimaru, near the head waters of the AVaitara. The Tabanaki Ciiiefs and Sic Geoege Geey. It is interesting at the present moment to turn to an address presented by the Taranaki chiefs to Sir George Grey, when he left the colony in 1853, after his first period of Governorship. I quote a few sentences from the address; "The love which we present to you is just and true, for our