96 
KURA-RED. 
monument; but whatever object was selected, it was sure to 
be painted red. If the corpse was conveyed by water, wherever 
they landed, a similar token was left; and when it reached its 
destination, the canoe was dragged on shore, painted red, and 
abandoned. When the hahunga took place, the scraped bones 
of the chief, thus ornamented, and wrapped in a red-stained 
mat, were deposited in a box or bowl, smeared with the sacred 
color, and placed in a painted tomb. Near his final resting- 
place a lofty and elaborately carved monument was erected to 
his memory; this was called he tiki, which was also thus colored. 
In former times the chief anointed his entire person with 
red ochre and oil; when fully dressed on state occasions, both 
he and his wives had red paint and oil poured upon the 
crown of the head and forehead, which gave them a gory 
appearance, as though their skulls had been cleft asunder. 
Red appears to have ever been a sacred color ; it is still so 
universally in heathen lands, and has been so from remote 
antiquity. The tabernacle was covered with skins dyed red ; 
the houses of princes were ceiled with cedar, and painted with 
vermilion. Ezekiel speaks of the Chaldean images pourtrayed 
with vermilion. The heathen power is described by St. John 
as a great red dragon, and the anti-Christian one as a woman, 
clothed in scarlet, and sitting on a scarlet colored beast. 
Red was the distinguishing color of kings, princes, and rich 
men ; it still is the color of the Sovereign Pontiff and his 
Cardinals, who are clothed entirely in red, even from their 
hats to their very shoes. 
It is the chief prized color of all savages, and Maori tradi¬ 
tion records, that when they came from Hawaiki, they brought 
a supply of kura with them, that they might not be without 
so necessary an article. 
CARVED BOX. 
