"Have since learnt that they have strongholds—or hippas, as they call them—which they retire to in time of danger."
[Hawkesworth spelt it, Heppahs; <i>he</i> = Maori definite article.]
1794. `History of New South Wales' (1818), p. 175:
"[On the coast of New Zealand] they passed many huts and a considerable <i>hippah</i>, or fortified place, on a high round hill, from the neighbourhood of which six large canoes were seen coming towards the ship."
1842. W. R. Wade, `Journey in New Zealand' (Hobart Town), p. 27:
"A native pa, or enclosed village, is usually surrounded by a high stockade, or irregular wooden fence, the posts of which are often of great height and thickness, and sometimes headed by the frightful carving of an uncouth or indecent image."
1858. `Appendix to Journal of House of Representatives,' E-4, p. 4:
"They seem, generally speaking, at present inveterate in their adherence to their dirty native habits, and to their residence in pas."
1859. A. S. Thomson, M.D., `Story of New Zealand,' p. 132:
"The construction of the war pas . . . exhibits the inventive faculty of the New Zealanders better than any other of their works. . . . Their shape and size depended much on the nature of the ground and the strength of the tribe. They had double rows of fences on all unprotected sides; the inner fence, twenty to thirty feet high, was formed of poles stuck in the ground, slightly bound together with supple-jacks, withes, and torotoro creepers. The outer fence, from six to eight feet high, was constructed of lighter materials. Between the two there was a dry ditch. The only openings in the outer fence were small holes; in the inner fence there were sliding bars. Stuck in the fences were exaggerated wooden figures of men with gaping mouths and out-hanging tongues. At every corner were stages for sentinels, and in the centre scaffolds, twenty feet high, forty feet long, and six broad, from which men discharged darts at the enemy. Suspended by cords from an elevated stage hung a wooden gong twelve feet long, not unlike a canoe in shape, which, when struck with a wooden mallet, emitted a sound heard in still weather twenty miles off. Previously to a siege the women and children were sent away to places of safety."