stockade and all within were killed
or taken. The dead were variously reckoned at from two hundred to a
thousand. One division of the Ngapuhi were sufficiently disgusted at
Hongi's deceit to refuse to join in the surprise, and Waikato, the
powerful chief who had accompanied him to England, declared he would
go afield with him no more. Even his own special clan, though they had
yielded to the furious exhortations of his blind wife Kiri, an Amazon
who followed him in all his fights, urged him to spare some of the
captives of rank. The pitiless victor spared none. Five he killed with
his own spear. The death songs of two have been preserved and are
quoted as choice specimens of Maori poetry.

Between 1821 and 1827 Hongi carried fire and sword into almost every
corner of what is now the Province of Auckland. At first none could
stand before him. He assailed in 1822 two large _pas_ near where the
suburbs of Auckland city now spread. In vain the terrified inmates
tried to buy off the savage with presents. Nearly all were slaughtered
or taken, and Hongi left naught in their villages but bones, with such
flesh on them "as even his dogs had not required." He invaded the
Waikato and penetrated to a famous _pa_--a triple stockade at
Mataki-taki (Look-out). To get there he dragged his war-canoes
overland across the Auckland isthmus, straightened winding creeks for
their passage, and, when the Waikatos felled large trees across one
channel, patiently spent two months in cutting through the trunks.
At length the Look-out fortress was stormed with horrible slaughter.
Defended on one side by a creek, on another by the Waipa river,
elsewhere by deep ditches and banks that were almost cliffs, the lofty
stronghold was as difficult to escape from as to enter. It was crowded
with women and children: ten thousand people were in it, says one
account. When the spear-men broke before the terrible musket-fire, the
mass of the despairing on-lookers choked the ways of escape. In their
mad panic hundreds of the flying Waikatos were forced headlong over
a cliff by the rush of their fellow-fugitives. Hundreds more were
smothered in one of the deep ditches of the defences, or were shot
by the merciless Ngapuhi, who fired down upon the writhing mass till
tired of reloading. It was the greatest of Hongi's victories, though
not bloodless for the conquerors, like that of Totara, where only one
Ngapuhi had been killed. Famous fighting men, the Waikato chie