His luckless enemies, armed only with spears, tomahawks, stones and clubs, were shot and enslaved by thousands and eaten by hundreds. Wide districts were swept bare of people. No man cared for anything except to procure a gun and thereby have a chance to save his life. A musket was, indeed, a pearl of great price. It has been pleaded for Hongi that he protected the missionaries, and that by forcing his race to get guns at any price he unwittingly developed trade. It is indeed true that in their desperate straits the tribes sold flax, timber, potatoes, mats, tattooed heads, pigs--even their precious land--for firearms. Without them their lives were not worth a month's purchase. Men and women toiled almost frantically at growing and preparing flax or providing anything exchangeable for muskets, powder and lead. An old Brown Bess was worth three tons of scraped flax. Undoubtedly whites were welcomed, both as traders and fighters, with a readiness unknown before. In 1835, New Zealand exports to Sydney alone were valued at £113,000, her imports at £31,000. It was a poor set-off against an era of butchery. Determined to carry out the threats he had made in Sydney, Hongi began his campaigns by sailing southward with a great fleet of war-canoes. Passing to the head of the Hauraki Gulf he sat down before the _pa_ of Totara, the chief fortress of the Thames tribes--the men whom he had doomed in Sydney. The place was well garrisoned, and commanded by the head chief, Trembling-Leaf. Even the three hundred musketeers found the _pa_ too strong for open assault, though those inside had but one gun and no ammunition. Hongi fell back upon fraud and offered honourable peace, if a certain sacred greenstone _mere_ were handed to him as a trophy. It was solemnly handed over, and the principal invaders were feasted in the _pa_. One of them, ashamed of the intended treachery, whispered to an acquaintance in the garrison, "Beware!" In vain. That night, as Hongi's victims were sleeping securely, the Ngapuhi rushed the stockade and all within were killed or taken. The dead were variously reckoned at from two hundred to a thousand. One division of the Ngapuhi were sufficiently disgusted at Hongi's deceit to refuse to join in the surprise, and Waikato, the powerful chief who had accompanied him to England, declared he would go afield with him no more. Even his own special clan, though they had yielded to the furious exhortations of his blind wife Kiri, an Amazon who followed him in all his fights, urged him to spare some of the captives of rank. The pitiless victor spared none. Five he killed with his own spear. The death songs of two have been preserved and are quoted as choice specimens of Maori poetry.