66 THE SOUL AND THE [PART I. 



former disregarding this feeling. In the centre of 

 the island, at Taupo, I found that a custom exists 

 and I conclude that it has existed throughout the 

 island of cutting off the heads not only of their 

 enemies, to prepare and preserve them, but also of 

 their friends and relations, for the purpose of keep- 

 ing them to lament over from time to time. At 

 all funeral ceremonies the old women are generally 

 the most violent in their grief; and some are so 

 energetic in their " tangi," that their bodies are 

 entirely covered with deep scars, from the incisions 

 which they make with their broken shells, and 

 their eyes become inflamed from an excess of crying. 

 Man, according to the notions of the natives, 

 is endowed with an immortal, incorporeal spirit 

 (wairua), which at his death departs from the body, 

 and goes, as a falling star, to the reinga, or nether 

 world, the entrance to which is down the face of 

 a rocky cliff at the Cape Maria van Diemen. An 

 ancient pohutukaua-tree (Metrosideros tomentosa) 

 stands there, upon the branches of which the spirit 

 descends. The natives hold this place in great awe 

 and veneration; and even Christian natives who 

 accompanied me would not go near it. But the 

 spell has been partially broken by a missionary cut- 

 ting off the branch on which the spirit was supposed 

 to alight. In the interior the natives still adhere 

 to their ancient notions. The reinga is the common 

 dwelling-place of the spirits, but it is not the only 

 one. Before the spirit of an ariki, or hereditary 



