38 Transactions. 
great number of other enormous pas in the Auckland district, betokens the 
extremely dense Maori population which once existed upon this isthmus—a 
population destroyed by the late owners of the soil, and numbered with the 
past; but which, in its time, was known by the significant title of Nga Iwi— 
‘The Tribes.’ =- 
Leaving naught at Mauinena and Makoia but the inhabitants’ bones, 
having flesh and tendons adhering, which even his dogs had not required, 
Hongi pursued his course. He drew his canoes across the isthmuses of 
Otahuhu and Waiuku, and descended the Awaroa. At a sharp bend in the 
narrow stream, his largest canoe could not be turned, and he was compelled 
to make a passage for her, by cutting a short canal, which may yet be seen. 
At length he arrived aù Matakitaki, a pa situated about the site of the 
present township of Alexandra, where a number of Waikato natives had 
taken refuge. The pa was assaulted, and while Hongi was in the act of 
carrying it on one side, a frightful catastrophe was securing to him the corpses 
of its wretched occupants on the other. Panic-stricken at the approach of 
the victorious Ngapuhi, the multitude within, of men, women, and children, 
rushed madly over the opposite rampart. The first fugitives, unable to scale 
the counterscarp, by reason of its height, and of the numbers which poured 
down on them, succumbed and fell ; those who had crushed them were crushed 
in like manner; layer upon layer of suffocating humaniiy succeeded each 
other. In vain did the unhappy Leings, as they reached the parapet, attempt 
to pause—death was in front, and death behind—fresh fugitives pushed on ; 
they had no option, but were precipitated into, and became part of the dying 
mass. When the deed was complete, the Ngapuhi came quickly up, and shot 
such as were ai the surface and likely to escape. 
Never had cannibals gloated over such unexpected good fortune, for more 
than 1,000 victims lay dead in the irench, and the magnitude of the feast 
which followed may, perhaps, be imagined from the fact that, after the lapse 
of forty-two years, when the 2nd Regiment of Waikato Militia, in establishing 
their new settlement, cleared the fern from the ground, the vestiges of many 
hundred native ovens were discovered, some of them long enough to have 
admitted a body entire ; while numberless human bones lay scattered around. 
From several of the larger bones, pieces appeared to have been carefully cut, 
for the purpose, doubtless, of making fish-hooks, and such other small articles 
as the Maoris were accustomed to carve from the bones of their enemies.” 
Nor was Te Waharoa idle during all this time. Having, by his courage, 
activity, and address, acquired the leadership of his own people, he had long 
determined to extend the boundaries of their territory by conquering that of 
the Ngatimaru ; but, before commencing his sanguinary wars against that 
tribe, he had felt it necessary to form offensive and defensive alliances with the 
