the most
tempting price they could offer in another shape. Although the arms
which they have obtained in this way have generally been of the most
trashy description, they have been sufficient to secure to the tribes
that have been most plentifully provided with them a decided superiority
over the rest; and the consequence has been that the people of the Bay
of Islands, who have hitherto had most intercourse with European ships,
have been of late years the terror of the whole country, and while they
themselves have remained uninvaded, have repeatedly carried devastation
into its remotest districts.

More recently, however, the River Thames, and the coasts to the south
of it, have also been a good deal resorted to by vessels navigating
those seas; and a great many muskets have in consequence also found
their way into the hands of the inhabitants of that part of the island.

When Rutherford speaks of the two parties whom he saw engaged having had
about two thousand stand of arms between them, it may be thought that
his estimate is probably an exaggerated one; but it is completely borne
out by other authorities. Thus, for example, Davis, one of the
missionaries, writes, in 1827: "They have at this time many thousand
stand of arms among them, both in the Bay and at the River Thames."

The method of fighting, which is described as being in use among the New
Zealanders, in which, after the first onset, every man chooses his
individual antagonist, and the field of battle presents merely the
spectacle of a multitude of single combats, is the same which has,
perhaps, everywhere prevailed, not only in the primitive wars of men,
but up to a period of considerable refinement in the history of the
military art.

The Greeks and Trojans, at the time of the siege of Troy, used both
chariots and missiles; and yet it is evident from Homer that their
battles and skirmishes usually resolved themselves in a great measure
into a number of duels between heroes who seem to have sometimes paused
by mutual consent to hold parley together, without at all minding the
course of the general fight.

Exactly the same thing takes place in the battles of the American
Indians, who are also possessed of bows and arrows. The New Zealanders
have no weapons of this description, and, until their intercourse with
Europeans had put muskets into their hands, were without any arms
whatever by which one body could, by its combined strength, have made an
impre