384 Essays. 
sneezing, various persons or peculiar things first met on leaving the house, 
&c., &c., were all ominous., An aitua, or evil prognostic, casually arising by 
some chance thing or accident done by or to another, was also believed in. 
Ghosts, too, were commonly believed, and greatly dreaded; but this haunt- 
ing spirit or phantom (kehua) which haunted its former place of residence 
when in the body, and also the repositories of the dead, differed widely from 
the sensible intellectual spirit (wairua) which had departed to the reinga, 
and which was not feared. The former were as lemures and larve, the 
latter as manes or spiritus. There were also nocturnal visitations (¢aepo) ; 
voices from the dead; demon spectres speaking in the whistling winds, 
| especially in an old hut; and, above all, the Jast words (poroaki) of the 
dying, to which they paid great attention, and when spoken at random, in 
great weakness, wandering, or delirium, were often productive of much 
mischief. They had also their soothsayers and augurs, who gave predictions 
of lucky and unlucky days for fighting, voyaging, &c., and which they often 
ascertained by a kind of sortes, or lot. Many of the “priests” were great 
physiognomists, and read the features closely, that they might know what 
such a slave would become; they also believed in something akin to the 
“evil eye" of the East. Some tribes disliked the owl and the lonely little 
swamp bird maata (Sphencacus punctatus), and, yet they both persecuted and 
killed them. All lizards were more or less dreaded by every New Zealander : 
this is a curious feature, and worthy of deep investigation. It was their only 
living representation for the Atwa (or malignant demon), which, according 
to their belief, was gnawing their vitals in sickness, and especially in con- 
sumption ; while, however, stout men and warriors would often fly from a 
lizard, they would also return and kill it. Shooting stars, meteors, and phos- 
phorescent fires in woods and marshes, they considered portentous ; but 
thunder, lightning, severe storms, voleanie eruptions, and earthquakes, they 
laughed at. The nearness of the moon to a star or planet was also considered 
very ominous. They had many trivial ceremonies in travelling and voyaging ; 
as in crossing the culminating peak of a range, or by certain solitary 
stones (named), or by any famed cliff or cavern, or upon entering on dreary 
plains, or on crossing a spot termed by them the backbone of the North 
Island; at such places they all singly perform a slight simple ceremony in 
passing; gathering a small branch, they cast it on or towards the object, 
using a few words by way of salutation, or eustom, or charm, which words 
varied in different parts and by different tribes. So at sea, on being about 
to pass over a bar, or to enter a narrow tidal passage, or to pass round a 
cape or headland; there they would halt a moment, and the ^ priest," 
or chief, would mutter a few words of chaunt or charm, and then proceed. 
ix Te the writer it has ever been most animating at such a time, with 
