100 JOHN RUTHERFORD of them said his heart would burst if he did not get a hoe.” They were told that a supply had been written for to England; but “they replied that many of them would be in their graves before the ship would come from England, and the hoes and axes would be of no advantage to them when dead. They wanted them now. They had no tools at present, but wooden ones to work their potato-grounds with; and requested that we would relieve their present distress.” When he returned from his visit to Shuke- hanga, many of the natives of that part of the country followed him, with a similar object, to the settlement. “When we left Patuona’s village,” says he, “we were more than fifty in number, most of them going for an axe or a hoe, or some small edge-tool. They would have to travel, by land and water, from a hundred to a hundred and forty miles, in some of the worst paths, through woods, that can be conceived, and to carry their provisions for their journey. A chief’s wife came with us all the way, and I believe her load would not be less than one hundred pounds; and many carried much more.” But, perhaps, the most impor tunate pleader the reverend gentleman encountered on this journey was an old chief, with a very long beard, and his face tattooed all over, who followed him during part of his progress among the villages of the western coast. “He wanted an axe,” says Marsden,