The fisherman had his god; so had the husbandman, the voyager, the warrior, the thief; mothers dedicated their offspring to one or other of these numerous Powers, and chiefly to Hero, the god of thieves, and to Oro, the god of war. “If to the former, the mother, while pregnant, went to the marae with the requisite offerings, when the priest performed the ceremony of catching the spirit of the god with the snare previously described, and infusing it into the child even prior to its birth, that it might become a clever and desperate thief. Most parents, however, were anxious that their children should become brave and renowned warriors. This appears to have been the very summit of a heathen mother’s ambition, and to secure it, numerous ceremonies were performed before the child was born; and after its birth it was taken to the marae, and formally dedicated to Oro. The spirit of the god was then caught, and imparted to the infant, and the ceremony was completed by numerous offerings and prayers. At New Zealand, stones were thrust down the throat of the babe, to give it a stony heart, and make it a dauntless and desperate warrior.” This dedication of the child to the sanguinary war-god points to a condition of society in which life was verily and indeed a battle, and every one had to hold his own by right of a strong arm and a reckless spirit. There was no room for the feeble in such a system; they crawled aside to die; or were trampled to death in the rush and press of the crowd. Civilisation has its victims; but assuredly they are few in comparison to the thousands and tens of thousands destroyed by the merciless tyranny of Heathenism. Civilisation does at least teach us our duties towards our neighbours; while Savage Man had little sentiment of compassion or affection for father or brother, daughter or wife. The second class of objects regarded with religious veneration was _Idols_. In every island and district these were different; but in every island and district they abounded. Some were large, some small; some hideous in the extreme, others were almost comely. No fixed pattern appears to have been before the idol-makers; each man followed his own fancy. The third object of worship was the _Etu_,--that is, some bird, fish, or reptile, in which the natives believed that a spirit resided. This form of idolatry was more in vogue in the Samoas than in any other island-group. Among the Samoans, the objects regarded as _etus_ were, indeed, almost innumerable, and frequently they were of extraordinary triviality. It was not unusual to see a chief, in other matters really intelligent, muttering his prayers to a fly, an ant, or a lizard, if such chanced to crawl or alight in his presence.