The famous Hongi was certainly a savage of uncommon quickness of perception, as his circumventing of the Mokoians in their lake-stronghold shows. He had shrewdness enough to perceive that the Maori tribe which should first secure firearms would hold New Zealand at its mercy; and he was sufficient of a man of business to act upon this theory with success and utter ruthlessness. He probably did more to destroy his race than any white or score of whites; yet his memory is not, so far as I know, held in special detestation by the Maori. Two or three better qualities this destructive cannibal seems to have had, for he protected the missionaries and advised his children to do so likewise. Then he had a soft voice and courteous manner, and, though not great of stature, must have been tough, for the bullet-wound in his chest which finally killed him took two years in doing so. Moreover, his dying exhortation to his sons, “Be strong, be brave!” was quite in the right spirit for the last words of a Maori warrior. Hongi would seem to be an easy name enough to pronounce. Yet none has suffered more from “the taste and fancy of the speller” in books, whether written by Englishmen or Colonists. Polack calls him E’Ongi, and other early travellers, Shongee, Shongi, and Shungie. Finally Mr. J. A. Froude, not to be outdone in inaccuracy, pleasantly disposes of him, in _Oceana_, as “Hangi.” “Old Colonial,” in an article written in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, gives Mokoia as the scene of a notable encounter between Bishop Selwyn and Tukoto, a Maori tohunga or wizard. To Selwyn, who claimed to be the servant of an all-powerful God, the tohunga is reported to have said, as he held out a brown withered leaf, “Can you, then, by invoking your God, make this dead leaf green again?” The Bishop answered that no man could do that. Thereupon Tukoto, after chanting certain incantations, threw the leaf into the air, and, lo! its colour changed, and it fluttered to earth fresh and green once more. [Illustration: PLANTING POTATOES] Among many odd stories told of the juggling feats of the vanishing race of tohungas this is one of the most curious. More than one version of it is to be found. For example, my friend Edward Tregear, in his book _The Maori Race_, relates it as an episode of a meeting between Selwyn and Te Heu Heu, where the trick was the _riposte_ of the chief to an appeal by the Bishop to him to change his faith. In that case the place of the encounter could scarcely have been Mokoia, or the tohunga have been Tukoto.