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Little Repero, who had frequently boasted, during the passage, that he was too much of an Englishman ever to cry again, made a strong effort when his father, Shungie, approached him, to keep his word; but his early habit soon got the better of his resolution, and he evinced, if possible, more distress than any of the others."

Marsden saw the wives of several of the chiefs toiling hard in the fields with no better spade than this; among others the head wife of the great Shungie, who, though quite blind, appeared to dig the ground, he says, as fast as those who had their sight, and as well, first pulling up the weeds as she went along with her hands, then setting her feet upon them that she might know where they were; and, finally, after she had broken the soil, throwing the mould over the weeds with her hands.

Fire, however, was wanting; and to procure it, Shungie took my fowling-piece, and, stopping up the touch-hole, he put a small piece of linen into the pan, and endeavoured to excite a spark.

I then inquired who this chief was, and was informed that his name was Shungie, one of the two chiefs who had been at England, and had been presented to many of the nobility there, from whom he received many valuable presents; among others, a double-barrelled gun and a suit of armour, which he has since worn in many battles.

Persons taken in battle, whether chiefs or not, become slaves to those who take them. One of our chiefs had been shot by Shungie, and the body was brought back, and laid upon some mats before the huts. Twenty heads, also, were placed upon long spears, which were stuck up around our huts; and nearly twice as many bodies were put to the fires, to be cooked in the accustomed way.

Some of them are made of a darker-coloured stone, susceptible of a high polish; some of whalebone; and Nicholas mentions one, which he saw in the possession of Tippoui, brother of the celebrated George of Wangarooa, and himself one of the leaders of the attack on the 'Boyd, which, like that of Shungie, which Rutherford speaks of, was of iron, and also highly polished.

He was in attendance upon his brother Korro-korro, one of the greatest chiefs in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, and, as well as Shungie, who has just been mentioned, celebrated all over the country for his love of fighting, and the number of victories he had won. Yet even this hardy warrior was no more proof than any one of his wives or children against this strange habit of emotion.

Shungie is stated, upon one occasion, to have eaten the left eye of a great chief whom he had killed in battle, under the idea of thus increasing the glory and brightness of his own left eye, when it should be transferred to the firmament; for it is understood that when any one eats of the person he has killed, the dead man becomes a part of himself.

"He gave a portion of wheat," says Marsden, "to six chiefs, and also to some of his own common men, and directed them all how to sow it, reserving some for himself and his uncle Shungie, who is a very great chief, his dominion extending from the east to the west side of New Zealand.

Each chief appears to be intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of his own "amoco." There is also in the possession of the Church Missionary Society a bust of Shungie, cut in a very hard wood by himself, with a rude iron instrument of his own fabrication, on which the tattooing on his face is exactly copied.