Miscellanies, A New Zealand hongi.
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NEW ZEALAND.
Church Miss. Soc --Mr. and Mrs. Booth, Mr. J. Stack, and Tamahana Te Rauparaha, safely arrived in New Zealand in December last.
Miscellanies.
A NEW-ZEALAND HONGI.
The Engraving on the following page represents a New-Zealand hongi, or rubbing noses. This is the substitute for our shake of the hand, and the custom continues to be universal, though not so much used as formerly. On important occasions the hongi is generally accompanied by the tangi, or cry--a singular outbreak of strong feeling, which was usual among the New Zealanders both in joy and sorrow. On the departure of friends the tangi was heard. Expressions of mingled grief and affection display themselves in the countenance of the wailer. Tears glisten in his eyes. At length, approaching the object of his lament, he clings around his neck, crying bitterly, and earnestly embracing him; while in former times, to evince more strongly the depth of his feeling, the flint was unsparingly used by the wailer on his neck and arms until the blood gushed forth. On the return of friends it was just the same: their arrival was greeted with doleful cries and lamentations; nor was it until the formalities of the tangi had been duly discharged, that the natural sounds of joy and mutual gratulation had room to express themselves.
It was, however, when a chief died that the tangi assumed its most severe aspect. The body, having been decorated according to native fashion, was exposed in view of the assembled tribe, and bitter weepings and wailings continued night and day, until the sun had three times risen and set. All the immediate friends, relatives, and slaves of the deceased, by the severity of the cuttings they inflicted on themselves, testified to their affection and their sense of the Joss they had sustained. Each person armed himself with a piece of flint, held between the third linger and the thumb, the edge protruding according to the depth of the wound intended to be inflicted. The face, from the forehead down on either side, the legs, arms, and chest, were lacerated, the women surpassing the men in the severity of this self-inflicted punishment, while boisterous crying added to the horror of the scene. It was a just representation of heathen sorrow--sorrow without hope. How many mournful scenes of this kind are going forward throughout the heathen world! The New-Zealand tangi, as an universal ceremony, is fast being laid aside. On the death of the great chief Te Rauparaha there was no tangi, except by a very few, chiefly owing to the endeavours of his Christian son Tamahana to put it down.
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