254 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
times in the floor of the dwelling, laying a piece of 
native cloth upon the infant’s mouth, and treading 
down the earth upon the helpless child. Neither 
were the children as liable to be destroyed, after 
having been suffered to live for any length of time. 
The horrid deed was always perpetrated before 
the victim had seen the light, or in a hurried man¬ 
ner, and immediately after birth. The infants, 
thus disposed of, were called tamarii kitihia , 
uumihea , or tahihia , children stabbed or pierced 
with a sharp - pointed strip of bamboo cane, 
strangled by placing the thumbs on the throat, 
or tahihia , trodden or stamped upon. These 
were the mildest methods; others, sometimes em¬ 
ployed, were too barbarous to be mentioned. 
The parents themselves, or their nearest rela¬ 
tives, who often attended on the occasion for this 
express purpose, were the executioners. Often, 
almost before the new-born babe could breathe 
the vital air, gaze upon the light of heaven, or 
experience the sensations of its new existence, that 
existence has been extinguished by its cruel 
mother’s hand ; and the “ felon sire,” instead of 
welcoming, with all a father’s joy, a daughter or a 
son, has dug its grave upon the spot, or among the 
thick-grown bushes a few yards distant. On receiv¬ 
ing the warm palpitating body from its mother’s 
hand, he has, with awful unconcern, deposited the 
precious charge, not in a father’s arms, but in its 
early sepulchre; and instead of gazing, with all 
that thrilling rapture which a father only knows, 
upon the tender babe, has concealed it from his 
view, by covering its mangled form with the un¬ 
conscious earth; and, to obliterate all traces of 
the deed, has trodden down the yielding soil, and 
strewed it over with green boughs, or covered it 
