CONCERNING THE EVIL SPIRIT. 141 
formerly, killed, upon the death of a chief, that 
they may follow and attend upon their master: 
and it was no uncommon thing for a wife to be 
urged by her friends to hang herself upon a tree, 
that she may accompany her departed lord, and 
remain with him for ever. When not exhorted 
by her friends to self-destruction, she has inflicted 
death upon herself, of her own free-will ; and has 
perished miserably with him she loved, leaving 
her orphan children to the care, or, more properly 
speaking, to the neglect, of strangers. This prac- 
tice has happily, of late years, almost ceased to 
exist. 
The New Zealanders, though remarkably super- 
stitious, have no gods that they worship ; nor have 
they any thing to represent a being which they 
call god. They imagine that it is a great spirit, 
who thunders, who brings the wind, and who is the 
cause of any unforeseen loss, either of property or 
life ; and hence, all their thoughts connected with 
him are those of fear and dread. Sickness is 
brought on by the ‘'Atua'’, who, when he is angry, 
comes to them in the form of a lizard, enters their 
inside, and preys upon their vitals till they die. 
Hence they use incantations over the sick, with 
the expectation of either propitiating the angry 
deity, or of driving him away ; for the latter of 
which purposes they make use of the most threat- 
ening and outrageous language ; sometimes tell- 
ing their deity, that they will kill and eat him ; 
at other times, that they will burn him to a cinder. 
