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 I5,te owners of the soil, and numbered with the 

 past j 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 at 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 humanity succeeded each 

 other. In vain did the unhappy beings, 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 at 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 trench, 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." 



!N^or 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 ofiensive and defensive alliances with the 



