The white trader would then stretch out enough calico to cover them.

The strip was their price.

The Maoris loved the higgling of the market, and would enjoy nothing better than to spend half a day over bartering away a single pig.

Moreover, a peculiar and profitable, if ghastly, trade sprang up in tattooed heads.

A well-preserved specimen fetched as much as twenty pounds, and a man "with a good head on his shoulders" was consequently worth that sum to any one who could kill him.