They found the country luxuriantly clothed with forest and everywhere a beautiful verdure. The species of trees in the woods were unknown to them. They specially noticed here and there cabbage-palms, which they cut down for the cabbages.[76] [76] There is only one kind of palm in New Zealand (the North Island) and that is of the peculiar genus _Rhopalostylis_ of which there are two species. Most palms produce a "cabbage"--which is simply the mass of undeveloped fronds, the heart of the tree. The woods abounded in birds of great variety, some of them exquisitely beautiful, but all quite unknown to the Europeans. Amongst the food supplies of the natives were observed occasionally "lobsters" (which were probably langoustes, see p. 190), besides various wild birds, which the Maoris either roasted by fastening them upon a small stick stuck into the ground and inclined towards the open fire, or baked by putting them into the ground with hot stones. Like the other Polynesians, these Maoris were given to displaying their sorrow, either for the death of a relation, or for some matter of mere personal pique, not only by shedding quantities of tears and singing mournful songs, but by cutting their arms, faces, chests, and thighs with sharp-edged shells, so that in the middle of their paroxysm of grief their bodies were covered with blood. Many of the natives met with were scarred from head to foot with old "grief marks". Some of the promontories stretching out into the sea were noteworthy for the fortified villages, called by the natives _eppah_ or _pah_. "The best engineer in Europe could not have chosen a situation better adapted to enable a small number to defend themselves against a greater. The steepness of the cliffs renders it wholly inaccessible from the water, which encloses it on three sides; and, to the land, it is fortified by a ditch and a bank raised on the inside: from the top of the bank to the bottom of the ditch is 22 feet; the ditch on the outside is 14 feet deep, and its breadth is in proportion. The whole seemed to have been executed with great judgment; and there had been a row of pickets or palisades, both on the top of the bank and along the brink of the ditch on the outside; those on the outside had been driven very deep into the ground, and were inclined towards the ditch, so as to project over it; but of these the thickest posts only were left, and upon them there were evident marks of fire, so that the place had probably been taken and destroyed by an enemy."