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.