244 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND cuap. x 
cultivate, necessarily must. When we first came to Tegadu 
the crops were just covered, and had not yet begun to sprout ; 
the mould was as smooth as in a garden, and every root had 
its small hillock, all ranged in a regular quincunx by lines, 
which with the pegs still remained in the field. 
We had not an opportunity of seeing them work, but 
once saw their tool, which is a long and narrow stake, 
flattened a little and sharpened ; across this is fixed a piece 
of stick for the convenience of pressing it down with the 
foot. With this simple tool, industry teaches them to turn 
pieces of ground of six or seven acres in extent. The soil 
is generally sandy, and is therefore easily turned up, while 
the narrowness of the tool, the blade of which is not more 
than three inches broad, makes it meet with the less 
resistance. 
Tillage, weaving, and the rest of the arts of peace are 
best known and most practised in the north-eastern parts ; 
indeed, in the southern there is little to be seen of any of 
them; but war seems to be equally known to all, though 
most practised in the south-west. The mind of man, ever 
ingenious in inventing instruments of destruction, has not 
been idle here. Their weapons, though few, are well cal- 
culated for bloody fights, and the destruction of numbers. 
Defensive weapons they have none, and no missives except 
stones and darts, which are chiefly used in defending their 
forts; so that if two bodies should meet either in boats or 
upon the plain ground, they must fight hand to hand and 
the slaughter be consequently immense. 
Of their weapons, the spears are made of hard wood 
pointed at both ends, sometimes headed with human bones; 
some are fourteen or fifteen feet long. They are grasped by 
the middle, so that the end which hangs behind, serving as a 
balance to keep the front steady, makes it much more difficult 
to parry a push from one of them than it would from one of 
a spear only half as long which was held by the end. Their 
battle-axes, likewise made of a very hard wood, are about six 
feet long, the bottom of the handle pointed, and the blade, 
which is exactly like that of an axe but broader, made very 
