Extract from W. Colenso's Letter published in the Hawkes Bay Herald 17 Oct. /59. In referring to an account of a Meeting with the Natives about the Wahaparata Bridge, on which occasion he acted as Interpreter he says ''I could not refrain from quietly warning them (as an old friend, and as a Member of the Provincial Council) that inasmuch as they had sold their back lands to me like themselves and not to winged birds and had kept the frontages over which roads to the interior must be had that the time would both quickly and surely come when their consent to roads and bridges and public improvements would neither be asked nor required!'