8. (See page 14.)

Maori Massacres of Former Days.—Instance No. 1. In 1820 Hongi, New Zealand's Napoleon, as he has been called, brought over to England by the Missionaries as a shining specimen of their Converts, was presented at Court, and received from George the Fourth congenial presents of powder and guns. On getting back to New Zealand he found that one of his people had been knocked on the head in some quarrel with a neighbour Tribe whose Chief was one Hinaki. Poor Hinaki sued for peace, and offered every reparation—but he was the Lamb in the fable—the Wolf meant to eat him: there were the new weapons, too, to flesh. In the first battle between them Hinaki was shots when the "converted" Hongi scooped out the eye of the dying man, swallowed it, and then stabbed him in the neck and drank his blood. About 1,000 Natives were slaughtered in this one fight, and about 300 cooked and eaten. On Hongi's triumphant return to the Bay Islands he had twenty captives in his own canoe, whom he had picked out for slaves; but his daughter, who had lost her husband in the fight, with dishevelled locks rushed down to the water's edge as the canoe touched the shore, and seizing the sword presented to her father by George the Fourth's own hand, jumped on board, and smote off several of the poor captives' heads. Twenty more of the wretched Prisoners were killed and eaten; yet the frantic woman, not thinking that the shade of her husband was sufficiently appeased even with this sacrifice, went into the bush with a musket, and there shot herself. The ball, however, only passing through her arm instead of her head, she was still alive when found; but, determined to accompany her husband to the Reinga, she afterwards strangled herself.

Hongi had no sooner finished one expedition than he prepared for another. He quickly assembled a thousand men, and proceeded with them to Mercury Bay, to make war upon the tribes of that district; ordering another army of two thousand more to be raised, and to follow him. Success again attended his arms; and, flushed with page 83 victory, be next attacked Kaipara, where he made a great slaughter. In 1822, he again visited the Thames and the Waikato, and ascended the Waipa, where he took several large Pahs; thence he nearly penetrated as for as the Wanganui—in this expedition he slew fifteen hundred of his enemies.

In 1823, he attacked Rotorua, conveying his canoes by water, as far as possible, and then dragging them by a road he had cut through the forest, to the lake. Here again he was victorious, and slew many He continued every year his hostile raids, first to one part and then to another, always with success. His name spread terror wherever he went. In fact, he became the Napoleon of New Zealand, declaring, when remonstrated with by the missionaries, that he should not desist until he had subjected the entire island to his control, and that as England had but one King, so, likewise, should there only be one in New Zealand.

Instance No. 2. In 1825, a Cook's Strait Native, one Pehi, was killed and eaten by Te Tamai, a Middle Island chief. In revenge of this, .Pehi's Tribe bribed the brutal master of one of the Sydney Traders, with a load of flax, to carry them down to Te Tamai's strong' hold, where they landed and stormed the Pah with such terrible slaughter that 500 baskets of human flesh are said to have been carried back to the Schooner, Te Tamai was taken prisoner, carried away to Cook's Straits, and delivered up to Pehi's widow. At first, and for about a fortnight, she behaved so kindly to him that a stranger might have taken them for man and wife rather than for doomed captive and mortal foe. She dressed him in her finest mats, and decked his head with her choicest feathers—then, one day, had him tied to a tree, and while in this position, took a spear, stabbed him in the jugular, placed her mouth to the orifice, and drank his blood warm ..has it gushed forth.

Instance No. 3, Some while previous to 1833, a fishing canoe of the Waikatoes was driven ashore at the Waitara, in the beautiful Taranaki Country, when most of the wrecked crew were cruelly murdered and eaten by the Ngatiawa Tribe then dwelling there. In revenge of this, the late Te Whero Whero, alias Te Potatau, a great chief of the Waikato, and the Native who was chosen for the first Maori King by the present Rebels (a potentate, too, with whom I once had the honor of page 84 smoking a pipe), made a fell swoop on the Ngatiawa—stormed their fortress at Pukerangiora, pitched over the cliff, tomahawked, and slew some eleven hundred men, women, and children; picked out about two hundred for slaves, and then marched back with many baskets of flesh, leaving Pukerangiora such a shambles that the air, for miles around, was tainted with the odour of putridity. A party of the fugitive Tribe, escaping from this massacre, formed that Band of Ngatiawa Weasels, alluded to at page 82, who afterwards got over to the Chatham Isles and ate up the poor Moriori.