Gulf of Hamaki are more mountainous even than those of the Bay of Islands.
At Port Nicholson there is an excellent harbour; a navigable river, the Hutt; a great extent of very rich land; an admirable site for the town; with a population at present of between two and three thousand persons, among whom are many of high family connexions and respectability from England, who have brought considerable capital with them, and a consequent demand for labour—most of which advantages are not to be found on the Thames, where there are as yet no emigrants, and where it is very certain none will be sent by Government, and where the population will be made up entirely from the emigration of doubtful characters from New South Wales, or of fickle, discontented spirits from this place.—The natives on the Thames have always been known as a very bad set, and those who were here at the beginning of this settlement will understand what trouble an ill-disposed set of natives may give to a new-comer, who has everything to do, and none but these to help him.
Port Nicholson has been most wantonly cried down at Sidney by parties interested in other settlements; because they had land there, and none here. I saw the other day, in "The Sidney Colonist," a letter from a person they called their Konorarika correspondent: this veracious individual described Thorndon as "liable to be washed away by the floods from the hills after heavy rains;" which ridiculous nonsense would not be worth noticing, but from the danger of its being believed by persons having no means of learning the truth, for the situation of Thorndon is, of all others, one the most perfectly exempt from any danger from floods; and one hardly knows how sufficiently to admire the impudence of the person who could state as truth so visible an impossibility.
I think it of little consequence what people in other parts of
