342 
FEASTS. 
Ruaka, a Wanganui tribe, are said to have weak heads, rahi 
rahiy and are especially adduced as an example ; the pigeon 
at such times gives them violent headaches, though other 
persons can eat it with impunity. The natives are now 
gradually acquiring a taste for European food, and some 
have quite renounced their old way of living. 
Some years ago, Tamihana te Rauparaha and several 
young chiefs of the Ngatiraukawa formed a kind of club 
amongst themselves, determining to give up their native 
customs, and adopt those of Europeans ; they had good 
houses erected, and took their meals in the same way we 
do, which they have persevered in doing, and this has be- 
come a means of raising their tribe in the scale of civilization. 
Feasts. 
The hdkari , or feast, was formerly given either as a 
paremata , return for a previous one, or on some par- 
ticular occasion, such as a marriage, making peace, or the 
stirring up a war, for obtaining help either to build a 
house, make a canoe, to hunt, or fish ; they were some- 
times given by individuals, but more frequently by the 
inhabitants of one place to those of another ; the halcari was 
often on a very grand scale, proportioned to the wealth and 
influence of those who gave it. Sometimes a number of 
poles were planted in the ground, fifty or sixty feet high, 
which were made to support eight or ten stories, heaped up 
with baskets of food to the very top, at other times long 
walls of kumara were erected ; these were made with the 
greatest care ; they were generally about four feet high, as 
many broad, and were crowned with a covering of pigs 
roasted whole ; several hundreds were often thus killed for a 
single feast, or else their place was supplied with dried fish, 
and with what is considered a very great delicacy, birds, or 
pork cut up in small pieces, and cooked in their own fat ; 
these are packed up in large hua, calabashes, or in papa, 
ornamental dishes, made of the bark -of the totara, and 
tastefully decorated with feathers. When the guests arrive 
