New South Wales having spent as much as six hundred pounds at a time in the purchase of those lands from one of the claimants, in thorough ignorance of the validity, or even the reasonableness, of one claim over another, supposing of course that any were valid. The cause of these disputes has sometimes been the dishonesty of the Europeans in selling the same land to different individuals, but more frequently from the natives having done so; not always dishonestly; as, according to their notion of titles, (see report of House of Lords' committee,) a totally different tribe may consider they have an indisputable title to the same land that has been sold by another tribe only two years before, because in the interim they may have cleared and planted with potatoes, or otherwise occupied it for one whole year without interruption. This can only apply to lands which are far from the usual haunts of any tribe; but almost all the large tracts purchased by Pakihas are lands thus situated, for the Mowries would never sell lands near their settlements for sufficiently low prices to induce Europeans to become purchasers of more than enough for the sites of their houses, gardens, &c. In two purchases which I saw made, one at Tawranga and the other at Roturoa, the prices given were preposterous, and could only have been submitted to by the purchasers because they could not do without the land. The spot at Tawranga was not above fifty feet square, and the cost of it not less than fifty pounds in trade. That at Roturoa was about half an acre of water frontage, and the cost twelve pounds ten shillings; but the first was in the middle of a Pa, while the other was only near one, and had always been used by the purchaser as a landing-place to his residence ever since he had been at Roturoa. He told me he considered himself very lucky to get it even for that sum, as he had been trying for years to buy it without success; and even this land did not appear to me a perfectly free purchase, for there were on it two spots which were "taboo," and from which I was
