362 Essays. 
language, * where his navel-string was cut,” as his first blood (ever sacred in 
their eyes) had been shed there. (b.) By having had his secundines buried 
there (this, however, was much more partial). (c.) By a publie invitation 
from the owner to dwell on it. (d.) By having first cultivated it with per- 
mission. (e.) By having had his blood shed upon it. (f) By having had 
the body or bones of his deceased father or mother or uterine brother or 
sister, deposited or resting on it. (g.) By having had a near relative killed 
or roasted on it, or a portion of his body stuck up or thrown away upon it. 
(h.) By having been bitterly cursed in connection with that piece of land— 
i.e. this oven is for thy body, or head; on that tree thy liver shall be fixed 
to rot; thy skull shall hold the cooked birds, or berries of this wood, &c. 
(i.) Or by the people of the district using for any purpose a shed which had 
been temporarily put up there and used by a chief in travelling. 
Gi.) Indefinite—(a.) By having been invited to come there by the chief 
with a party to dwell (it. having had their canoe in passing called to shore). 
b. Through his wife by marriage, but such would only be a guasi life- 
interest to him—7.e. during her life and infancy of the children ; as, in case 
of children, they would take all their mother’s right. (¢.) By having assisted 
in conquering it. (d.) By having aided with food, a canoe, a spear, &c., an 
armed party who subsequently became conquerors of it. All these equally 
applied, though he should belong to a different tribe or sub-tribe. 
(ii. Beyond all these, however, was the right by gift or transfer, and by 
inheritance, which not unfrequently was peculiar and private. This (which 
has of late years been much contested, and too often, it is feared, by ignorant 
and interested men, or by those who have too readily believed what the 
talkative younger New Zealanders now say) may clearly be proved beyond 
all doubt—(a.) By the acts of their several ancestors (great-grandfathers) 
to their children, from whom the present sub-tribes derive their sub-tribal 
names, and claim their boundaries; such ancestors divided and gave those 
lands simply to each individual of their family, which division and alienation, 
however unfairly made, has never been contested. (5.) By their ancient 
transfers (gifts or sales) of land made by individuals of one tribe to indi- 
viduals of another, as related by themselves; and from which gift, or aliena- 
tion, in many instances, they deduce their present claims. (c.) By their 
earliest (wntampered) sales and transfers of land to missionaries and to others, 
which were not unfrequently done by one native (as was notably the case 
in the first alienation of land by deed, to Mr. Marsden at the Bay of Islands, 
in 1815) ; although the foreign transferees, not knowing the native custom, 
often wished others, being co-proprietors, to sign the document of transfer— 
and this, by-and-by, came to be looked upon as the New Zealand custom— 
whence camo the modern belief that all must unite in a sale; and thence it 
