36 Transactions. 
and every spot, from the foot to the hill-top, not required, and specially 
planned for defensive purposes, had been built on in this regular manner. 
Even the small flat top, sixty yards long by forty wide—the citadel—on 
which the greatest care and labour had been bestowed to render it difficult of 
access, had been as full of houses as it could hold, leaving only a small space 
all round the precipitous bank for the defenders to stand on. 
It would not be difficult to multiply authorities, in order to prove that 
the New Zealanders were formerly much more numerous than when the 
Islands were first systematically colonized by Europeans, but I conceive that 
I have afforded sufficient evidence on this point, and it now remains for me 
to notice the principal causes which led to their decrease. 
“The natives,” says Mr. Manning, “attribute their decrease in numbers, 
before the arrival of the Europeans, to war and sickness ;” but I have already 
shown, that although the weapons they used before they obtained firearms 
were sufficiently formidable in close combat, the destruction of life incident to 
the possession of such weapons would, probably, never have brought about the 
deplorable results which followed upon the introduction of the musket into 
their system of warfare. Indeed, Mr. Manning himself leans to this opinion. 
“The first grand cause,” he says, “of the decrease of the natives, since the 
arrival of the Europeans, is the musket.” Now, it was not until after the year 
1820 that fire-arms were extensively used in native warfare. Shortly before 
that date, the Ngapuhi chiefs, Hongi and Waikato, had visited England, from 
whence they returned laden with valuable gifts, of which no small part 
consisted of guns and ammunition, for which, too, they soon bartered the 
remainder of their newly-acquired treasures, with traders from New South 
Wales. 
Then commenced a period of slaughter almost unparalleled in any country, 
when compared with the total population engaged in the conflicts. Bands of 
the Ngapuhi, armed with weapons whose destructive power was unknown to 
the great majority of the native people, marched from one end of the North 
Island to the other, carrying dismay and destruction wherever they went. 
The population of large districts was exterminated or driven into mountain 
fastnesses, where they either perished, in numbers, from famine and exposure, 
or contracted diseases which ultimately proved fatal to them. The great 
tribes of the Arawa and Waikato, against whom the first efforts of the 
Ngapuhi were directed, seeing the necessity of at once obtaining similar 
weapons, in order to avoid threatened destruction, suspended all their usual 
pursuits for the purpose of preparing flax, to be exchanged with the European 
traders for guns, powder, and ball. As fast as these were obtained, they were 
turned against weaker neighbours, and the work of destruction received a 
fresh impulse. Hongi, Epihai, Tamati Waka Nene, and Tareha, amongst 
