in New Zealand . 
223 
si on which Nature must formerly have undergone in these 
parts. To all questions concerning this timber the natives 
invariably reply, “ No te hurihanga wenua,” i. e. caused by 
the overturning of the earth. In building of chapels, or good 
houses, throughout the district, the uatives generally dig up 
the large trees out of the ground (which are mostly Totara), 
and, having split and smoothed them, use them for posts; 
the timber thus procured, is dark, somewhat of a chocolate 
colour, and has a very neat appearance. 
Water, that indispensable refreshment to the dry and 
thirsty traveller, was rather scarce in this locality, being only 
observed here and there trickling from the cliffs. Under¬ 
neath these drippings were small pools, and by their sides 
lay shells of the Ilaliotis genus, with which the passers-by 
drank, but not to their satisfaction; the water being strongly 
impregnated with some nauseous alkali, probably soda, the 
crystallized efflorescence of which lay deposited about. 
From these cliffs the natives collect in large quantities the 
red oxide of iron, with which they make a coarse red pigment, 
much used in smearing their canoes, architraves of their 
chief’s houses, and stores in which they keep their sweet 
potatoes, images,* carved work, mausoleums, sacred enclo¬ 
sures, and every article, in fact, which they may please to 
make sacred; red being invariably their sacred colour.f The 
# These images, like those of the Lares of the ancient Romans, appear 
to have been made in commendation of their ancestors; and may, I think, 
be not improperly classed as Lares domesiici et familiarcs. It does not 
appear, however, that they were ever worshipped. 
t Red, appears to have been a colour used for similar purposes from 
very ancient times, Herodotus states, that, “ according to ancient cus¬ 
tom, all ships were painted of a red colour (lib. iii. Thalia , s. 58) ; and, 
speaking of the inhabitants of Western Libya, lie says —■“ The Ausenses 
stain their bodies with vermillion” (lib. iv. Melpomene, s. 191). From 
Pliny, wc learn—“ this (red) was much used by the Romans in his time as 
a paint, and formerly applied to sacred purposes (Nat, Hist., lib. xxxiii. 
c.7.). The writer of the Apocryphal book of Wisdom, represents the 
