kindness. Next to every white man was placed a New Zealander; and when all hands were busy pulling the net, a sudden and furious attack was made upon the unsuspecting and defenceless Europeans, and every one of them was murdered.

On the arrival of the gentlemen at the foot of the pah, Krokro took them to see the body of his friend, which was laid in a canoe, and watched by two old women, who sat on either side of it. When Krokro mentioned to them his intention of showing it to the strangers, there was an evident opposition on their part, which was overcome with apparent difficulty by the authority of their chief; and so tenacious are the people of this island of the approach of Europeans near their dead, or even their burying-places, that subsequent observation gave ample proof of how far Krokro had disregarded the prejudices of his countrymen in the present instance.

The body was at first enveloped in mats, but Krokro raised it out of the canoe and stripped.

it. The temples were bound with a chaplet of leaves, and the hair was ornamented with the feathers of the albatross; the knees were gathered up and the head rested upon them; the abdomen had collapsed, and the intestines had been evidently removed, though no mark of an incision was visible; and the limbs were much shrivelled from the process that had been adopted to prevent putrefaction, of which, though the person had been dead for a considerable time, there was not the slightest appearance.

When the body was replaced in the canoe, the women resumed their station on either side of it; and Krokro remarked, that it was that night to be deposited in its final resting place.

The gentlemen then ascended nearly to the top of the pah where the house of the chief stood it was about nine feet long, six feet wide, and four feet high, with a small sliding door, through which he could creep with some difficulty. The huts of his people were smaller.

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He now produced two human heads, in the same state of preservation as the one mentioned on a former occasion, and offered to sell them for some gunpowder. As the manner of preserving heads so effectually as to prevent decay for many years, must be a subject of curiosity, perhaps it may not be amiss here to detail it.

When the head has been separated from the body, and the whole of the interior of it extracted, it is rolled up in leaves, and put into a kind of oven, made of heated stones laid in a hole in the ground, and covered over with earth. The temperature is very moderate, and the head is baked or steamed until all the moisture, which is frequently wiped away, has exuded; after which it is left in a current of air until perfectly dry. Some of these preserved heads were brought to England: the features, hair, and teeth were as perfect as in life; nor have they since shown any symptoms of decay.

The custom of preserving heads is universal

among these islanders. They bring them back from their wars, in the first instance, as

a trophy, and, in the event of peace, to restore them to the party from whom they had taken them an interchange of heads being a common article in their treaties of reconciliation. They now barter them to the Europeans for a trifle.

When the gentlemen took their leave, Krokro presented them with a basket of potatoes, and gave permission to shoot a few pigs, that ran wild upon a neighbouring island. In the afternoon some persons went thither and killed seven.

March 4th, Saturday. Fine, thermometer 68°. The ship was surrounded with canoes, and great quantities of fish were procured in exchange for fish-hooks.

5th, Sunday. Fine, thermometer 68°. It was now determined to explore the banks of the Shukehanga, on which the cowry tree was reported to grow in great abundance. This river empties itself into the sea on the

western coast of the island, and was described by the inhabitants to be navigable for some miles from its mouth.

The gentlemen who undertook the excursion left the ship in the afternoon, and directed their course to the Kiddy-Kiddy, which flows into the Bay of Islands on the eastern side of New Zealand, with the intention of going up that river as far as the new missionary settlement, and of then walking across the island, there reduced to an isthmus not more than thirty miles broad, to Shukehanga. They took with them the necessary instruments to ascertain the latitude of the place and to sound the river; and they were accompanied by Mr. Marsden and Mr. Hall, a missionary, who was quite master of the language of the country.

Several of the natives attended them to carry their baggage: these men bear the heaviest burdens with great patience and perseverance, and willingly follow Europeans in their longest journeys, attracted either by the