Chap. IV. TANGI, OR CRYING— NAYTI. 75 
8j3oiling their fine clothes, donned for the occasion, by 
any blood-letting. They therefore hung down their 
heads and looked wretched, patiently waiting for the 
moment when native etiquette would allow them to 
laugh and be cheerful, and exchange the important 
news from either side of the Strait. 
We started with a native guide to look for pigeons, 
strongly impressed with the wish of escaping to a re- 
spectful distance from the melodious greeting. 
Along the foot of the western hills we passed through 
numerous flourishing potato-gardens, and were greeted 
and stared at by those at work in them, who eagerly 
collected all the news from our guides. We found 
abundance of pigeons, and returned laden to the pa. 
The tangi had terminated ; the umu, or " cooking- 
" holes," were smoking away for the feast ; and eager 
groups of inquisitive faces were gathered round the 
proud narrators of our doings in Queen Charlotte's 
Sound. Our friend Jim Crow found many old friends 
and relations at Pitone, and his audience was by no 
means the least numerous or attentive. Nothing can 
remind one more forcibly of the monkey who had seer^ 
the world, than a maori thus relating news. He is an 
incorrigible exaggerator, and swells each minute cir- 
cumstance into an affair of state, taking delight in 
drawing repeated exclamations of amazement from the 
surrounding hadauds, who admire and envy the red 
night-cap or trowsers with which he may be adorned, 
with quite as much zeal as they drink in his metaphors 
and amplifications. 
Nayti, who belonged to a different tribe, the Kawia, 
had not yet had much opportunity of indulging in 
this universal propensity ; he seemed shy and reserved 
among these people, and they appeared to regard him 
with more suspicion than resjiect 
