f the country followed him, with a similar object, to the
settlement. "When we left Patuona's village," says he, "we were more
than fifty in number, most of them going for an axe or a hoe, or some
small edge-tool. They would have to travel, by land and water, from a
hundred to a hundred and forty miles, in some of the worst paths,
through woods, that can be conceived, and to carry their provisions for
their journey. A chief's wife came with us all the way, and I believe
her load would not be less than one hundred pounds; and many carried
much more." But, perhaps, the most importunate pleader the reverend
gentleman encountered on this journey was an old chief, with a very long
beard, and his face tattooed all over, who followed him during part of
his progress among the villages of the western coast. "He wanted an
axe," says Marsden, "very much; and at last he said that if we would
give him an axe, he would give us his head. Nothing is held in so much
veneration by the natives as the head of their chief. I asked him who
should have the axe when I had got his head. At length he said, 'Perhaps
you will trust me a little time; and, when I die, you shall have my
head.' This venerable personage afterwards got his axe by sending a man
for it to the settlement."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AD: Probably Nene.]

[Footnote AE: There is no "l" in the Maori orthography, and the name
cannot be traced.]

[Footnote AF: This is another case where Rutherford's pronunciation
seems to have been at fault.]

[Footnote AG: The taro.]

[Footnote AH: The kumera, a sweet potato, which was extensively
cultivated by the ancient Maoris.]

[Footnote AI: "Haere mai," "come here," the usual words of welcome.]

[Footnote AJ: That is, Australia.]

[Footnote AK: The origin of the Maori is dealt with exhaustively by Mr.
S Percy Smith in "Hawaiki"; by Mr. E. Tregear, in "The Maori Race"; and
by Professor Macmillan Brown, in "Maori and Polynesian."]

CHAPTER V.

Taken altogether, New Zealand presents a great variety of landscape,
although, even where the scenery is most subdued, it partakes of a bold
and irregular character, derived not more from the aspect of undisturbed
Nature, which still obtrudes itself everywhere among the traces of
commencing cultivation, than from the confusion of hill and valley which
marks the face of the soil, and the precipitous eminences, with their
sides covered by forests, and their summits barren of all vegeta