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Show 504 NEW ZEALA~D. Dec. 1835. sidered in all cases as a protection. The chiefs agreed to confiscate the land of the aggressor to the King of England. The whole proceeding, however, in thus trying and punishing a chief was entirely without precedent. The aggressor, rporeover, lost cast in the estimation of his equals; and this was considered by the British as of more consequence, than the confiscation of his land. As the boat was shoving off, a second chief stepped into her, who only wanted the amusement of the passage up and down the creek. I never saw a more horrid and ferocious expression, than this man had. It immediately struck me, I had somewhere seen his likeness: it will be found in Retzsch's outlines to Schiller's ballad of Fridolin, where two men are pushing Robert into the burning iron furnace. It is the man who has his arm on Robert's breast. Physiognomy here spoke the truth ; this chief had been a notorious murderer, and was to boot an arrant coward. At the point where the boat landed, Mr. Bushby accompanied me a few hundred yards on the road: I could not help admiring the cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we left lying in the boat, when he shouted to Mr. Bushby, "Do not you stay long, I shall be tired of waiting here." We now commenced our walk. The road lay along a wellbeaten path, bordered on each side by the tall fern, which covers the whole country. After travelling some miles, we came to a little country village, where a few hovels were collected together, and some patches of ground cultivated for potato crops. The introduction of the potato, has been the most essential benefit to the island; it is now much more used, than any native vegetable. New Zealand is favoured by one great natural advantage; namely, that the inhabitants can never perish from famine. The whole country abounds with fern ; and the roots of this plant, if not very palatable, yet contain much nutriment. A native can always subsist on these, and on the shells which are abundant on all parts of the sea-coast. The villages are chiefly conspicuous, by Dec. 1835. EXCURSION TO WAIMATE. 505 the platforms which are raised on four posts ten or twelve feet above the ground, and on which the produce of the fields is kept secure from all accidents. ?n ?oming near one of the huts, I was much amused by seemg m due form the ceremony of rubbing, or as it should more properly be called, pressing noses. The women, on our first approach, began uttering something in a most dolorous voice; they then squatted themselves down and held up their faces ; my companions standing over them placed the bridge of their own noses at right angles t~ theirs, and ~ommenced pressing. This lasted rather longer than a cordml shake of the hand would with us ; and as we vary the force of the grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing. During the process they uttered comfortable little grunt~, very much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbmg against each other. I noticed, that the slave would press noses with any one he met, indifferently either before or after his master the chief. Although among savages the chief has absolute power of life and death over his slave, yet there is an entire absence of ceremony between them. Mr. Burchell has remarked the same thing in Southern Africa with respect to the rude Bachapins. Where civilization has arrived at a certain point, as among the Tahitians, complex formalities are soon instituted between the different grades of society. For instance, in the above island, formerly all were obliged to uncover themselves as low as the waist in presence of the king. The ceremony of pressing noses having been completed with all present, we seated ourselves in a circle in the front of one of the houses, and rested there half-an-hour. All the native hovels which I have seen, have nearly the same form and dimensions, and all agree in being filthily dirty. They resemble a cow-shed with one end open, but having a partition a little way within, with a square hole in it, which thus cuts off a part, and makes a small gloomy chamber. In this the inhabitants keep all their property, and when the |