386 Essays. 
With the New Zealanders the observances of the tapu were in place of 
religion. Hence it was that the zapu was so rigidly upheld and enforced. 
Nothing could set it aside or alleviate it ; all were equally obnoxious to it. 
Hence, too, we may see why they inereased the misery of the miserable, and 
made the wretched sufferer still more wretched. If a man died at home in 
peace, it was owing to the anger of the demon Whiro (and very likely, as 
stated by the “ priests," in seven cases out of ten, to have been inflicted on 
account of some infringement of the tapu) ; consequently the family were 
to be also pillaged and peeled, to end, if possible, the visitation, by still 
further 
* placating the dread Atargatis.” 
If a canoe was upset, such of course could only be caused by the anger 
of the watery ruler, the New Zealand N eptune, Tawhirimatea (perhaps, 
too, for some secret infringement of the tapu); when the result must be the 
same, on the part of those on shore— siding, for the time, with the stern 
Nemesis. So in the case of death, or captivity in war, the malignant demon, 
Tu, who there presided, had definitively sentenced, as seen (doubtless for 
some violation of the zap), and it only remained for the living—the captive 
and his relations—to ratify by silently acquiescing. Even their savage 
cannibalism at such times may owe much of its origin to their belief in this. 
Again, in the case of the new seine (par. 36), which is rigidly tabooed until 
the first fish taken are tabooed and set free, their legends of Maui and his 
fishing up the North Island of New Zealand state that the present broken 
and abrupt face of the country is entirely owing to the brothers of Maui 
rushing to cut up the huge fish he had caught without having made the 
tabooed offerings of the first fish. Consequently it came to pass that under 
: the tapu they were secularists, never once thinking or caring about an here- 
after. Not that they disbelieved in an after state for man; but (1) that it 
was not a state to be desired ; and (2) that it would follow as a matter of 
course, not being dependent or contingent on anything done on earth— 
unless it were, on the one hand, in being a strenuous supporter of the 
“priests” and of the tapu; and, on the other, of dying a slave. 
39. Death with the New Zealander was the passage to the Reinga (Hades), 
the unseen world containing his departed people. No one, however, unless 
some suicides in a fit of insanity, ever willingly went there. Even the 
disembodied went on unwillingly, casting lingering, longing looks behind. 
Occasionally (according to the natives) a few of such returned from the 
very verge to the bodies and the world they had left ; such truly recovered 
from the gates of death. In the Reinga, the departed live without labour 
and trouble. They feed on kumara (sweet potatoes). Messages were often 
given to the dying person to take to deceased relatives there. All funeral 
