Chap. XIV. RELIGIOUS FEUDS AMONG NATIVES. 357 
gongoro, I was struck with the impregnable position 
of the three j as on isolated portions of the cliiF, only 
to be reached by means of rough ladders. I wondered 
how even the little party of English soldiers should have 
made the natives fly on the occasion of the Alligator's 
expedition in 1834. But the inhabitants told me that 
they had been more afraid of the cannon of the frigate, 
which picked out the houses, than of the soldiers who 
climbed up one side of each of the three hill-forts one 
after the other, as the natives descended by the opposite 
ladder and finally fled into the interior. 
The whole population of natives between the Sugar- 
loaf Islands and Patea struck me as being in a most 
repulsive and pitiable condition. They were all mission- 
aries, but divided in their creeds. The most dreadful 
religious schisms occurred daily between the nearest 
relations, on matters of which neither side really under- 
stood much. And this virulence of dispute on the 
most abstruse as well as the most trifling points of 
religion, l>oth in form and doctrine, I found very much 
replacing the strict puritan observances and adherence 
to absurd exaggerated forms. The disputes resounded 
with the names of the various European missionaries 
of the two denominations, and they compared the 
teachers perhaps more violently than they did the doc- 
trines. The Church party seemed generally to have the 
best of the dispute, for they quoted Mr. Hadfield and 
the Bishop as j)roofs that theirs was a " gentleman," 
or rangatira creed ; and called their opponents' teachers 
shoemakers, tailors, and servants. I took not the 
slightest part in these degrading disputes; and JVahine 
iti treated the disputants with the most sovereign con- 
tempt, saying they were an iwi tutua, or a " nation of 
plebeians." 
It is necessary to remind the reader that the Com- 
