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in their passage through the bush these had been torn all to pieces, and they were in tatters on arrival. Tom White came to Ryan, and asked him to entertain them, as his whâre was so very untidy, because he had so many youngsters about; and so Ryan did. Ryan was the first man who sawed timber in Little River. He worked with an Australian native, named Green. Ryan was a cooper by trade, and it was that which made him so important at the whale fisheries. Mr. Ryan is very anxious to correct an error in the first edition of the “Banks Peninsula Stories, which states that James Robinson Clough was an American. He says he knew him well, and all about his family, and he was a native of Lincoln, England. Mr Ryan declares that the Maoris of the Peninsula were an amicable and honest lot of people, who never harmed anyone materially. He declares that the greatest violence ever offered was to take the tobacco, and perhaps part of the clothing of a runaway sailor, but says that, even then, they never allowed their victim to go hungry.

The old gentleman was cooking whilst the writer was there, and a very good cook he is; but he is exceedingly reticent, as most are who have lived much in the bush. His greatest trouble is the gradual failing of his sight, which prevents him from reading. His son is one of the finest men it has been the writer’s lot to see, and would make a model for the Farnese Hercules. He and his father are much attached, and lead a very pleasant and homely life in this lonely whâre, hidden in the spurs of the great ranges.