With an energy quite unchecked by any knowledge of the real condition of New Zealand, the directors of the Company in London kept on sending out ship-load after ship-load of emigrants to the districts around Cook's Straits.

The centre of their operations was Port Nicholson, but bodies of their settlers were planted at Wanganui, at the mouth of the fine river described in the first chapter; at New Plymouth, hard by the Sugar-Loaves, in devastated almost empty Taranaki; and at pleasant but circumscribed Nelson in the South Island.

Soon these numbered five times as many Whites as could be mustered in the north.

Upon them at the very outset came the thunderbolt of Governor Hobson's proclamation refusing recognition to their land purchases.

Of this and of the land clause in the Treaty of Waitangi the natives were made fully aware by the missionaries.