ATTENDING THEIR WARFARE. 131 
friends, and keep them with religious strictness : 
and it was not till Europeans proposed to buy 
them, that the idea occurred to them of preparing 
the heads of their enemies ; first, as an article of 
barter, and, more recently, as a trophy of victory. 
This inhuman trafiic has been carried on to a 
great extent in the islands ; and the natives have 
ceased altogether to preserve the heads of their 
friends, lest by any means they should fall into 
the hands of others and be sold; which, of all 
ideas, is the one most horrible to them^. 
* All action of a most cruel and offensive character was per- 
petrated by an individual in the Bay of Islands. He had been 
up to the southward, where he had purchased heads, to the 
number of twelve or fourteen ; these heads belonged to chiefs 
of the Bay and its neighbourhood, who had been destroyed only 
a few weeks before. Some natives were on board ; when the 
inhuman wretch went into his cabin, and brought out a bag 
which contained the heads, and emptied them out, in the 
presence of the natives : some recognised their fathers — 
others their sons — some their brothers, and other near friends 
and relations. The weeping and lamentation caused by the 
indignity thus put on the relics of the departed were appalling; 
and all on board vowed revenge ; which they would have 
taken, could they have mustered strength sufficient. But, 
before they could do this, the cowardly wretch weighed anchor, 
and sailed out of the bay. The affair will never be forgotten 
by the natives ; and though years may pass over, they will, 
if an opportunity presents, take ample vengeance. They met 
with this same individual, on their expedition to Tauranga, 
and fired upon him ; when he was forced to run away. The 
heads were carried to Port Jackson, and sold; and when the 
matter was represented to the local authorities of that place, a 
Government order was issued, forbidding such a degrading 
traffic, in that colony, for the future. It will scarcely be 
credited, that, for the promulgation of this humane order, the 
Governor was made the object of most virulent attack by some 
of the colonial newspapers. 
