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Patuone may have taken part in other campaigns during this decade. However, he was mainly interested in the advantages to be gained from European settlement. When missionaries visited him in 1819, he extended his hospitality to them, spoke of his desire to visit Port Jackson (Sydney), New South Wales, and inquired about growing grain. (He was already experimenting with wheat.) Samuel Marsden, chaplain of New South Wales, was impressed with his kindness and good nature. As early as 1819 the shipbuilding and trading centre of Thomas Raine, David Ramsay and Gordon Browne may have been established under Patuone's patronage. Certainly, in 1826, he gave his protection at Hokianga to the 'Scotch carpenters', the more hardy of the intending settlers who came on the Rosanna under the auspices of the ill-starred first New Zealand Company. Patuone accepted, together with Nene and Muriwai, a payment of 36 axes from Thomas Kendall on behalf of Charles de Thierry in 1822, and put his mark on a deed purporting to sell Thierry 40,000 acres. All three later claimed that they regarded this payment merely as a present, or at best an earnest of intention to purchase.
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