356 | Essays. ` 
or bent considerably outwards, to enable the woman the better to hold, 
scrape, weave, and plait flax. At an early period, the little ears of the 
infant were bored with a sharp fragment of stone, or bit of obsidian ; an 
operation generally performed by its mother. 
(2.) Betrothal often took place at, or shortly after, birth (if not indeed, 
mentally, and conditionally, before). This was almost certain to ensue in 
the case of simultaneous births of opposite sexes among friends of equal 
rank, or distant relatives. If not then arranged by the parents or uncles, 
it was generally done during the early childhood of the children. While, 
no doubt, all such affiances arose from both good and political motives, 
nothing the New Zealanders ever did caused them more misery, and yet 
they could never be brought to see it. 
(3.) “Naming” of the child also followed soon after its birth. This 
ceremony was always performed by a “ priest" (cunning wright, or skilled 
man, who managed all such secret and mysterious matters, of exorcism, 
objurgation, or incantation) ; it has been called by Europeans, the “ naming ” 
of the child, but it does not mean that; it has also been called “ baptism,” 
and compared with Christian baptism, and the term iriiri adopted, rather 
unwisely, to express that ordinance. No doubt it was a high ceremony in 
the eyes of a New Zealander; but it was nothing else than a removal of the 
tapu (restraint, or prohibition) under which the child and mother lay— 
more a rite of purifieation than anything else. If the child was a boy, 
the "priest" expressed his wish that he should be brave and manly; ifa 
girl, that she should be efficient in all those peculiar duties pertaining to 
her sex. 
(4. About the age of puberty the tattooing operation was begun on 
both sexes, as, in the case of the man, it took several years to complete, 
and in that of the woman it was necessary, at least, that her lips should be 
finished ere she could have a husband ; red lips in women being abhorred, 
and black ones being considered the perfection of beautiful feminine lips. 
Regular tattooing in the male was confined to the whole face and to the 
breech, and sometimes to the thighs: certainly some were very hand- 
somely done. In the female it was confined to the lips, chin, between 
the eyes, and a little up the forehead, and on the back part of the 
leg, from the heel to the calf; the three last-mentioned being always 
indicative of rank. The women, also, often got themselves irregu- 
larly marked on the hands, arms, breast, and face, with small crosses, 
short lines, and dots. A very few women the writer has seen with 
tattooed faces just as a man; these belong to southern tribes ; some of 
. whom formerly had a very different style of tattooing (such as is shown in 
_ Cook's Voyages, plate 13, 4to edition). The chiefs wore their hair long, 
