ght and dripping with damp in the day--full of noxious
exhalations from the damp soil, and impossible to ventilate--they were
cut off by disease in a manner absolutely frightful. No advice would
they take: they could not _see_ the enemy which killed them, and
therefore could not believe the Europeans who pointed out the cause of
their destruction.

This change of residence was universal, and everywhere followed by the
same consequences, more or less marked: the strongest men were cut off
and but few children were reared. And even now, after the dreadful
experience they have had, and all the continual remonstrances of their
pakeha friends, they take but very little more precaution in choosing
sites for their houses than at first; and when a native village or a
native house happens to be in a dry healthy situation, it is often more
the effect of accident than design.

Twenty years ago a _hapu_, in number just forty persons, removed their
_kainga_ from a dry healthy position to the edge of a _raupo_ swamp. I
happened to be at the place a short time after the removal, and with me
there was a medical gentleman who was travelling through the country.
In creeping into one of the houses (the chief's) through the low door,
I was obliged to put both my hands to the ground; they both sank into
the swampy soil, making holes which immediately filled with water. The
chief and his family were lying on the ground on rushes, and a fire was
burning, which made the little den, not in the highest place more than
five feet high, feel like an oven. I called the attention of my friend
to the state of this place called a "house." He merely said, "_men_
cannot live here." Eight years from that day the whole _hapu_ were
extinct; but, as I remember, two persons were shot for bewitching them
and causing their deaths.

Many other causes combined at the same time to work the destruction of
the natives. Besides the change of residence from the high and healthy
hill forts to the low grounds, there were the hardship, over-labour,
exposure, and half-starvation, to which they submitted themselves--firstly,
to procure these very muskets which enabled them to make the fatal
change of residence and afterwards to procure the highly and justly
valued iron implements of the Europeans. When we reflect that a ton of
cleaned flax was the price paid for two muskets, and at an earlier date
for one musket, we can see at once the amount of exertion necessary to
ob