aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

96 AROUND THE WOELD.
nations, as late discoveries at Uxmel and Palenque plainly
show.
THE MAORIS' RELIGION.
Men, civilized and savage alike, are naturally religious.
The principle is God-implanted. These New-Zealand Maoris
believed in a plurality of invisible gods, and a future
existence, although the tapu took the place of religious
observances. They had priests and " sorcerers," and held intercourse
with their "ancestral dead." They were troubled
with demons. The heads of the chiefs were tabooed (tapu^^
no one being allowed to touch them, or hardly allude to them,
under fearful penalties. They believed in charms, and wore
them. Death, to them, was the passage to the Reinga^ the
unseen world, or the place of departed spirits. They prayed
to their gods for aid and direction. They did not fear to
die, yet preferred living in their mortal bodies. They
believed that individuals occupied different apartments in
Reinga, according as their earthly lives had been good or ill.
Messages were frequently given to dying persons to bear
away to deceased relatives in this shadow-land of souls. All
of their funeral wails over their recent dead ended with,
" Go, go, dear one, away to thy people ! " It is a singular
coincidence that the Fijians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Samoans,
as well as the New-Zealanders, considered
the place
of departure of the spirits, on their journey to the unseen
world, as the western extremities of their islands.
Burning Kauri gum for a kind of incense at funerals and
festivals, they considered the trees pointing skyward as symbolizing
life in a higher, better state of existence.
This resinous
substance. Kauri, — imported for making varnish, — is
not obtained in the present living Kauri pine-forests, but only
in the Auckland province of the north
island, where such
trees originally grew ;
yet of such ancient forests no other
trace remains than the resin now found deep in the soil.