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While watching the motley group, the author inquired of his old friend the influential chief Patuoni why he had become so interested in favour of Captain Hobson.

He replied, that some years before being on a visit to a related tribe, distant several days' journey from his own people, and the vessel of war which the Governor then commanded lying in the harbour, on the point of sailing to a port near to his own tribe, his young attendants intimated to the captain their desire that the aged and beloved chief might be conveyed in the vessel and thus spared the fatigue of many days' walk. The kind-hearted captain not only acceded to the request, but took the whole party on board; appropriated to Patuoni's use a cabin next his own, and insisted upon the chief sitting at the captain's table and partaking of his provisions.

He was kind and considerate to me, said Patuoni, and on the voyage treated me as a gentleman—as his equal. Many moons had been born and died, and then I heard that the good captain was returning with a writing from the Queen of England to the chiefs of my country, and my heart said, Up, Patuoni, assemble your native friends, be their numbers large, let their feet be nimble, and their words strong on behalf of your English friend.

We went to the meeting at the Bay of Islands, many in number, and with our tongues large to persuasion. The chiefs of that district opposed the new Governor at first, and were haughty and perverse; saying, We will not submit to an English Governor; let him go back oversea whence he came; but after listening to our words their thoughts changed; they said, Our friends Patuoni and his brother Nene, with other Hokianga chiefs wish us, we therefore will say Yes; we will do what the great Queen on the other side of the sea desires; our hands shall touch her writing; she shall be our mother, and we will be her children.

It was little imagined at the time either by the Europeans present or in England that the ruling spirit in this transaction was actuated by a feeling of gratitude for a kindness received

years before; and that this country owes the peaceful cession of a large and beautiful colony to the courteous conduct of a naval captain.

The fête was closed by the whole party simultaneously returning to their temporary huts on a point of land about a mile distant from the scene of the feast.

Scattered over the river were more than sixty canoes, paddling vigorously to the time beaten by one or two skilful men, selected by each company for that purpose.

The animation became more and more intense as louder and louder on the ear surged the chorus of voices, answering to the exhortations of the time beaters, "Be strong, be strong;" "Let your eyes be red;" whenever one large double-banked canoe with twenty or thirty paddles on each side gained upon or passed another; and as stroke by stroke they contended for the honour of the first place in the race.

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OLD TIMES-HEATHENDOM-THE FEAST OF THE DEAD.

Like foam on the crest of the billow,
Which sparkles and shrinks from the sight;
Like the leaf on the wind-shaken willow,
Though transiently, beauteously bright.
Like dew-drops exhaled as they glisten,
Like perfume which dies soon as shed,
Like melody hushed while we listen,
Is memory's dream of the dead.

THE remembrance of great men excites to greatness; and this faculty constitutes one of the main differences between man and the brutes, for in them the idea of heroism does not exist.

The memories of the persons and achievements of the illus

trious dead have been preserved in the minds of their countrymen by means of monuments, statues, poems, public funerals, and periodically recurring celebrations; and all nations have endeavoured by these means to sow the seeds of future noble actions; and of such commemorations none more curious than the Hahunga, or feast of bones, a death ceremony observed amongst the New Zealanders.

Upon the demise of a chief, the corpse is placed in some retired spot, generally in a tree, until the flesh has rotted from the bones, and the interior portions of the head, which has been previously severed from the body, being removed, the outer skin is dried upon its framework of bones, thus retaining the living form.

The Hahunga takes place after the harvest of the extra seed food planted for the purpose, consisting of kumaras, potatoes, and maize; additional quantities of dried fish being also prepared. At the appointed moon friendly tribes are invited to attend and celebrate the feast of the dead, before the interment of the bones in their final resting place, frequently a picturesque spot by the banks of some rivulet, to which the deceased resorted for fishing, or a favourite dell wherein he was accustomed to ensnare birds.

The coffin or box stained with gaudy dyes, and elevated upon a platform, forms the depository of the remains; his axe, warweapons, and favourite articles of apparel and ornament being buried with him; whilst his canoe, divided asunder, and the portions reared up at either end of the coffin, with such other adornments as native skill in wood carving may render available, produce an impressive funeral monument, increased in its solemnity by the suggestive melancholy of the feather-like foliage of the drooping rimu, and the graceful curves of the tree fern, intensified by the solitude of the surrounding forest.

Previous to the meeting, the priestess, or witch of the tribe, scrapes the bones clean with a shell; and the following ceremonies observed at the hahunga of Moki may be taken as a type of those generally observed.

Moki, a tall, athletic man, a very model for a sculptor's Hercules, but with all his wild manner and eccentricities a truthtelling, hospitable fellow, had lost the best beloved one of his six wives by death. The childish heart of the powerful decided man dictated that he should die too and rejoin her; so loading his musket and retiring into a neighbouring grove he was subsequently found shot through the heart, having pulled the trigger with his foot.

Being a great chief, and having died a heathen, the tribe resolved to celebrate his decease by the customary native rites; and a few favoured Europeans who knew him well and by whom he was much respected, were invited to attend.

It was late in the afternoon of the first day of the hahunga when our party arrived at the village, embowered in a rich valley through which ran a beautiful crystal stream, now murmuring and rippling its way over the boulders, and now slowly gliding in sleepy gentle curves, until it joined the large river of which it was a tributary.

Without delay we had presented to us the best provisions our hosts could afford; Indian corn roasted in a frying-pan, then boiled with water, and sweetened with sugar, formed a good substitute for coffee; kumaras, pumpkins, potatoes and pork, steamed in native ovens, were spread out in abundance, and large delicious water melons concluded our repast.

During our evening meal some observations were made upon the advantages the New Zealanders had derived from their commerce with Europeans; and with the self-complacency of Englishmen we concluded that our intercourse had been greatly beneficial to them. Some natives present inquiring the tenor of the remarks, they were interpreted, when a short pause ensued, soon broken however by a young man jumping up, and saying, The white men need not plume themselves on that point; he was not so certain that the advantages of European acquaintance were so great as Englishmen imagined; for he and all the natives had a stomachful of

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