The dead body was exorcised by the priests, dressed in its best, and allowed to sit in state. The dried heads and skulls of ancestors grinned from their pedestals at the latest addition to their ranks, who, with face painted, head befeathered, his costly ornaments upon him, his clubs and spears set ready to his hand, stared back at them with unseeing eyes, a lifelike figure enough among those musty relics of the long-ago dead. The _pihe_, or dirge, was sung, the choir standing before the body, and days went by, during which the long procession of relatives, friends, subjects and delegates from other tribes paid their respects to the mighty dead, grasping his cold hand, talking to him as though he were alive, speaking panegyrics and chanting laments, often of singular beauty, in his honour. Then followed the last act but one in the drama of death. "No useless coffin enclosed the breast" of the dead man, whose body, wrapped in flax mats, was either buried beneath the floor of his house, or hoisted to a high stage in the vicinity of the village and allowed to remain there for a twelvemonth. The year of mourning over, the dead man's effects, his valuable greenstone clubs, other weapons and ornaments were distributed amongst his heirs.[46] A great feast was also arranged and, while the attention of all was occupied with eating and drinking, the priests stole away, bearing the remains with them, to hide them for ever in some solitary sepulchre within the scarred bosom of the hills, or deep in the green twilight of the silent forests.[47] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 45: _Typha angustifolia._] [Footnote 46: Some remained undistributed, _tapu_ for ever.] [Footnote 47: In the case of chiefs of great fame, the remains were twice or thrice exposed to the veneration of the tribe before the final sepulture, which might then be delayed longer than is stated above.] CHAPTER VI GRIM-VISAGED WAR Animated, for all one knows, by mere lust of strife, the men of Waikato on the west soon after their arrival in New Zealand marched across the North Island to Maketu on the Bay of Plenty, and burned the Arawa canoe. From this outrage arose a war, the end of which was not until generations later, and from which, as a forest conflagration from a spark, arose other wars between tribe and tribe, until from end to end of Te Ika A Maui men were in arms against one another. Peace there was, but more often war; and by the time Captain Cook visited the Islands the village was deserted and the _pa_ predominant. Later, peace again prevailed; then wars again; and, as the quarrel with the Pakeha developed, strife filled the land till matters were adjusted at the end of the long struggle between Maori and colonist.