Travers.—On the Traditions and Customs of the Mori-oris. 25 
When sick their only medicine was water from some partieular spring, 
and miko, or cabbage tree, and though the spring was at a distance of 20 
miles, it mattered not, it would be brought to the sick person in a flax 
bucket. Another strange custom was this: the first who should see or 
touch the body of a person whose death had been caused by accident or 
violence should abstain from food for three consecutive sunrises and 
sunsets. They also believed that when a friend died he would send 
ashore black-fish, or sea leopards, and whenever either happened to be 
taken they would all muster together to eat the food sent by the dead, 
Of course the generous action was attributed to the last person deceased. 
“But of all their customs” (says Mr. Amery) “the most cruel one 
was to destroy every child that cried during the act of being born, as it 
was deemed an unlucky one. Upon my first arrival, a Mori-ori child was born 
during the night. On the following morning I went to enquire about it. 
They told me that it was “tamaiti tangi," i.e., crying child, and they had 
destroyed it before sunrise. I requested them to show me where they had 
put it. They led me to a spot, and to my horror and disgust pointed out a 
poor infant crushed to atoms beneath a huge piece of rock, weighing at 
least six hundredweight. They appeared to think they had performed a 
most praiseworthy and meritorious action. I told them they must never 
do so again. Ifthey did a great curse would be put upon them. Their 
reply was, that it might be bad for the white men to do so, but that it had 
been the Mori-ori custom from time immemorial, and therefore it was not 
wrong in them. It is true they have seen good and evil examples set by 
white men ; nevertheless the contact has been: beneficial, inasmuch as it 
has exercised a humanizing influence. The old customs I have alluded to 
are now obsolete, but the kiko kiko they stick to with great pertinacity.” 
* Amongst the most fatal diseases,” (says Mr. Amery), “are those of 
& pulmonary nature, the predisposing causes to which are numerous. I 
believe it to arise from hereditary taint and serofulous habit; in fact, they 
are all serofulous, and the connexion between scrofula and pulmonie con- 
sumption is obvious, and generally acknowledged ; for, when one disappears 
from the surface, the other almost invariably falls upon the lungs. Con- 
sumptive malady has fearfully increased of late years. They are also 
subject to cutaneous diseases, engendered by unwholesome food, and 
neglect of cleanliness. Of such diseases, the hakihaki, as it is termed— 
an aggravated form of iteh—first arising in small pimples, is the most 
distressing and disgusting. I have seen wretched objects literally a mass 
of sores from sole to crown.” 
The Mori-ori tradition as to Creation is very similar to that of the 
Maori, and, indeed, to that of most of the Polynesian race. In the begin- 
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