104 
REINGA. 
themselves into the water by some long sea-weed, they 
entered Po, the Reinga being the passage to it.* 
It was supposed that there were several compartments in 
Hades, the lowest being the worst, having no light or food, 
and there the spirits were thought gradually to pine away, and 
to be 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. Before a soul enters the 
Reinga, he has to pass a river called Waioratane, the keeper of 
which places a plank for him to go over; sometimes he will not 
do so, but drives him back to the upper regions, with friendly 
violence, in order that he may take care of the family he has left 
behind ; so, likewise, if he has not partaken of the food of 
the Reinga, he may return again to the earth. If a person 
has recovered from a dangerous disease, or from anything 
which threatened his life, 'he is said to have reached Waiora¬ 
tane and returned. 
The following account was given me of an old woman who 
was said to have died near Rotorua not many years ago :—She 
was taken ill and died, as they thought. They laid her out 
in the native fashion, on a bier in her house, and then rubbing 
the door over with red ochre, as a token of its being tapu, her 
relatives left her. Some days after, two natives were paddling 
along the coast in their canoe, when an old woman called to 
them to take her into the canoe. They landed, and were 
rather frightened at her appearance, her eyes being sunk in 
her head and glassy. She gave the following account of her¬ 
self :—She said, she had returned from the Reinga; that after 
her death, she came to a water, where some one met her, 
and bid her run and call for a canoe, otherwise she would 
be stopped by a large bird; she accordingly ran with all her 
might, and called for one, which immediately came for her, 
* 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 are left at its different rest¬ 
ing places on its way to the Reinga; these little bundles of leaves so left arc 
called Waka u’s. A green bundle denotes a recent death. 
