1835.) | CEREMONY OF RUBBING NOSES. 423 
panied me a few hundred yards on the road: I could not help 
admiring the cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we 
left lying in the boat, when he shouted to Mr. Bushby, ‘Do 
not you stay long, I shall be tired of waiting here.” 
‘We now commenced our walk. The road lay along a well- 
beaten path, bordered on each side by the tall fern, which covers 
the whole country. After travelling some miles, we came to a 
little country village, where a few hovels were collected toge- 
ther, and some patches of ground cultivated with potatoes. The 
introduction of the potato has been the most essential benefit to 
the island; it is now much more used than any native vegetable.. 
New Zealand is favoured by one great natural advantage; 
namely, that the inhabitants can never perish from famine. The 
whole country abounds with fern; and the roots of this plant, if 
not very palatable, yet contain much nutriment. A native can 
always subsist on these, and on the shell-fish, which are abundant 
on all parts of the sea-coast. The villages are chiefly conspi- 
cuous by the platforms which are raised on four posts ten or 
twelve feet above the ground, and on which the produce of the 
fields is kept secure from all accidents. 
On coming near one of the huts I was much amused by 
seeing in due form the ceremony of rubbing, or, as it ought to be 
called, pressing noses. ‘The women, on our first approach, began 
uttering something in a most dolorous voice ; they then squatted 
themselves down and held up their faces ; my companion standing 
over them, one after another, placed the bridge of his nose at right 
angles to theirs, and commenced pressing. ‘This lasted rather 
longer than a cordial shake of the hand with us ; and as we vary the 
force of the grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing. 
During the process they uttered comfortable little grunts, very 
much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbing against 
each other. I noticed that the slave would press noses with any 
one he met, indifferently either before or after his master the 
chief. Although among these savages, the chief has absolute 
power of life and death over his slave, yet there is an entire ab- 
sence of ceremony between them. Mr. Burchell has remarked 
the same thing in Southern Africa, with the rude Bachapins. 
Where civilization has arrived at a certain point, complex for- 
malities soon arise between the different grades of society: thus 
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