Walsh. — The Passing of the Maori. 157 



tion the thousands have dwindled into hundreds, and the 

 hundreds to tens, until the dying remnant, of lowered physique 

 and declining birth-rate, are the sole representatives of perhaps 

 the finest aboriginal people the world has ever produced. 



Firearms. 



One of the first steps towards the extinction of the Maoris 

 was the acquisition of firearms. Two or three guns made a 

 war-party practically invincible when the enemy was unprovided 

 with these weapons. When the Maoris heard the report, and 

 saw the warriors fall without apparently being struck, they 

 thought that some of the atuas, or ancestral deities, had come 

 down to join in the fight, and a wild panic and general stampede 

 would ensue, when they would be butchered without resistance 

 with the spear and mere. " We can fight against men," they 

 said, " but who can fight against the gods ? " 



The first recorded instance of the use of the new weapon in 

 Maori warfare was in the case of a small party of Ngapuhi who, 

 with only two old flint-lock guns, made a raid down the west 

 coast of the North Island in about 1818. After every battle 

 they stopped to feast on the slain, and took care that no sur- 

 vivors were left to carry the alarm to the next settlement. About 

 the same time another party of the same tribe made a similar 

 expedition along the east coast as far as Tauranga. But these 

 adventures were as nothing to those carried out a few years 

 later by the great chief Hongi Ika, who about this time became 

 head over the various branches of the Ngapuhi, who extended 

 from the Bay of Islands to Hokianga. 



Hongi was well acquainted with the ways of the pakeha, and 

 had already witnessed the effect of his weapons. If he could 

 only secure a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition he could 

 make himself supreme ruler of the whole Maori race. He had 

 helped to welcome the Rev. Samuel Marsden to the country, 

 and had taken the infant mission settlement at Rangihoua 

 under his protection ; and when in 1820 one of that body — 

 Mr. Thomas Kendal — proposed to go to England to help in 

 bringing out a Maori dictionary and grammar, he volunteered to 

 accompany him and assist him in the work. On his arrival 

 Hongi was presented to King George IV, and made the acquaint- 

 ance of a number of influential persons, who were greatly taken 

 with his intelligence and his professed desire for the improve- 

 ment of his people. His modest request for a bodyguard of 

 twenty soldiers was discouraged, and his attempt to procure 

 any quantity of weapons met with no success. The King, 

 however, made him a present of a suit of armour, while the 

 good people who credited his benevolent intentions gave him a 



