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 obtain it. But supposing a man to get a musket for half a ton of flax, another half-ton would be required for ammunition; and in consequence, as every man in a native _hapu_ of, say a hundred men, was absolutely forced on pain of death to procure a musket and ammunition at any cost, and at the earliest possible moment (for, if they did not procure them, extermination was their doom by the hands of those of their country-men who had), the effect was that this small _hapu_, or clan, had to manufacture, spurred by the penalty of death, in the shortest possible time, one hundred tons of flax, scraped by hand with a shell, bit by bit, morsel by morsel, half-a-quarter of an ounce at a time.
Now as the natives, when undisturbed and labouring regularly at their cultivations, were never far removed from necessity or scarcity of food, we may easily imagine the distress and hardship caused by this enormous imposition of extra labour. They were obliged to neglect their crops in a very serious degree, and for many months in the year were in a half-starving condition; working hard all the time in the flax swamps. The insufficient food, over-exertion, and unwholesome locality, killed them fast. As for the young children, they almost all died; and this state of things continued for many years: for it was long after being supplied with arms and ammunition before the natives could purchase, by similar exertion, the various agricultural implements, and other iron tools so necessary to them; and it must always be remembered, if we wish to understand the difficulties and over-labour the natives were subjected to, that while undergoing this immense extra toil, they were at the same time obliged to maintain themselves by cultivating the ground with sharpened sticks, not being able to afford to purchase iron implements in any useful quantity, till first the great, pressing, paramount want of muskets and gunpowder had been supplied. Thus continual excitement, over-work, and insufficient food, exposure, and unhealthy places of residence, together with a general breaking up of old habits of life, thinned their numbers: European diseases also assisted, but not to any very serious extent.