A pit was dug in the ground, one foot or more in depth, and suited in size to the quantity of provisions to be cooked. In this hole a fire was built, completely filling it, and in the fire a number of pebble stones were heated. When the fire had reached a proper heat it was entirely raked out of the pit. A layer of the red-hot stones was laid along the bottom, by means of improvised tongs of green wood, and these were carefully and quickly covered with certain green leaves. Then the pork or fish or potatoes, previously washed, cleaned, and wrapped up in green flax, were put into the hangi; a quantity of the red-hot stones were put over and round it; water was poured over the whole; green flax mats were hastily heaped on top and tucked in at the sides; and, lastly, the pit was filled in with earth well stamped and beaten down. In the course of an hour or more, according to the size of the joint, the hangi was opened, the provisions lifted out, the wrappings unfolded, and their contents placed in baskets of green flax, and thus dinner was served. The steam, generated under pressure in the ovens, was forced into every fibre of the articles cooking, so that these were most thoroughly done. Whole pigs—and whole human bodies in the cannibal times—are cooked in these hangi to perfection. I have eaten meat and vegetables done in them, that could not have been better cooked by a _chef de cuisine_ decorated with the red ribbon of _la Légion d'honneur_. It was one of the old customs never to eat in the living-houses. Cooking was always performed in the open air, and usually is so still. A rude shelter protected the fire in rainy weather; and at such times the meal was eaten under the verandah of the wharè. Burial customs among the old Maori were peculiar and complicated, and differed much among various hapu. In the case of slaves and inferiors, the bodies were thrown aside in some place where they could not be offensive to the living, or they were hastily interred on the beach, or somewhere in the forest. The death of a chief, or rangatira of note, was an affair of great importance. It was announced by loud wailing and crying—the Maori idea of grief being a noisy and demonstrative one. The corpse was washed and painted, dressed in the finest garments and ornaments possessed by the defunct, and laid in state in the verandah of the wharè, with a great display of weapons and trophies of various kinds around it. All the near relations of the deceased assembled to cry over him, and many—particularly of the ladies of his family—gashed their faces, breasts, and arms, with shells and obsidian knives. It was thought to be the most decorous and decent show of mourning to have the face and breast completely covered with the dried and clotted blood resulting from the numerous self-inflicted gashes.