588 SICK NETS BURIAL. DeC. 



natives, which they appeared to relish as much as hay : they 

 were called ' booa-cow.''* 



At the door of a house, or rather in the porch (before des- 

 cribed), I saw a woman reading : she was sick, Mr. Baker 

 told me, one of a long list of invalids, who frequently applied 

 to the missionaries for advice and medicine. I looked at her, 

 book, it was the Gospel of St. Matthew, printed at Paihia, in 

 the New Zealand language. Now, certainly, there was neither 

 constraint, nor any thing savouring of outward show, in this 

 woman's occupation, for my seeing her was sudden, and quite 

 accidental, arising from my going out of the usual path to look 

 at the oxen. Mr. Baker told me, that one of the most trou- 

 blesome, though not the least gratifying duties, of the mis- 

 sionaries, was that of attempting to act as medical men. No 

 regularly educated practitioner having at that time established 

 himself in the land, every complaint was entrusted to the 

 kind attention, and good will, but slight medical know- 

 ledge of the missionaries. We saw several nets for fishing 

 placed in separate heaps, each upon a small platform, at the 

 top of a post eight or ten feet in height : in a similar manner 

 yams and potatoes are preserved from the rotting influence of 

 the damp earth. The nets are made with the split leaves of the 

 * flax "' plant, not merely with the fibres, and last for many 

 years : both they and the food, thus exposed to the air, are 

 thatched, like the houses, with the broad leaves of an iris-like 

 rush, or flag, which grows abundantly by the river sides, and 

 in marshy places. I was here informed, that after the bodies 

 of the dead (which are exposed to the air, on platforms similar 

 to those I have just mentioned), are thoroughly dried, the 

 bones are carried away, and deposited in a secret burying 

 place. 



S5th. Being Christmas-day, several of our party attended 

 Divine service at Paihia, where Mr. Baker officiated. Very 

 few natives were present ; but all the respectable part of the 



* Literally cow-pig. Before white men brought others, pigs were the 

 only domestic animals known in Polynesia besides dogs : — and when a 

 cow first appeared in a ship, she was called cow-booa, or booa-cow. 



