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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 afibrded 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, arflaed 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 



