BITES AND CUSTOMS RELATING TO THE DEAD. 
231 
done, but when the time for taking the honey arrived, I 
sent a large piece of the comb to each of those who had 
done the deed, and received many thanks for the present ; 
and a few days afterwards I called upon them to know 
how they liked the honey, they all said it was excellent. 
I then reminded them that it was made from the flowers of 
the mimosa trees they had cut down, and consequently from 
the flesh of the dead ; they all laughed and acknowledged 
their foolishness, saying, I might plant as many more as I 
liked, and they would never interfere with them again. 
The prevailing idea of the abode of spirits was, that they 
went to the Reinga, which is another name for Po or Hades ; 
the word Reinga literally means, the leaping place. The 
spirits were supposed to travel to the North Cape, or land's 
end, and there passing over a long narrow ledge of rock, 
leaped down upon a flat stone, and thence slinging them- 
selves into the water by some long sea-weed, they entered Po, 
the Reinga being the passage to it ;* there were several com- 
partments in Hades, each having its own name, the lowest 
being the worst, had no light or food, and there the spirits 
gradually pined away, and were finally annihilated. Spirits 
were thought to require food, and to feed upon flies and 
filth ; but they had also the spirit of the kumara and taro in 
the highest region or that next to the face of the earth. 
Before a soul entered the Reinga, it had to pass a river called 
Waioratane, the keeper of which placed a plank for him to go 
over ; sometimes he would not do so, but drove him back 
to the upper regions, with friendly violence, to take care of 
the family left behind ; so, likewise, if he had not eaten in 
the Reinga, he might return to the earth. If a person 
recovered from a dangerous disease, or anything which 
threatened life, he was said to have reached Waioratane and 
returned. 
* The spirit of a person who resided in the interior generally carried with it 
some tohu or remembrance of the part it came from, such as a leaf of the 
palm tree ; that of a person on the coast took with it a kind of grass which 
grows by the sea side. A portion of these tohus were left at its different rest- 
ing places on its way to the Reinga ; these little bundles of leaves so left were 
called Waka u’s. A green bundle denotes a recent death. 
