In the afternoon I went home musing on what I had heard and seen. "Surely," thought I, "if one half of the world does not know how the other half live, neither do they know how they die." Some days after this a deputation arrived to deliver up my old friend's _mere_. It was a weapon of great _mana_, and was delivered with some little ceremony. I perceive now I have written this word _mana_ several times, and think I may as well explain what it means. I think this the more necessary as the word has been bandied about a good deal of late years, and meanings often attached to it by Europeans which are incorrect, but which the natives sometimes accept because it suits their purpose. This same word _mana_ has several different meanings, and the difference between these diverse meanings is sometimes very great, and sometimes only a mere shade of meaning, though one very necessary to observe; and it is, therefore, quite impossible to find any one single word in English, or in any other language that I have any acquaintance with, which will give the meaning of _mana_. And, moreover, though I myself do know all the meanings and different shades of meaning properly belonging to the word, I find a great difficulty in explaining them; but as I have begun, the thing must be done. It will also be a tough word disposed of to my hand, when I come to write my Maori dictionary, in a hundred volumes, which, if I begin soon, I hope to have finished before the Maori is a dead language. Now then for _mana_. _Virtus_, _prestige_, authority, good fortune, influence, sanctity, luck, are all words which, under certain conditions, give something near the meaning of _mana_, though not one of them give it exactly; but before I am done, the reader shall have a reasonable notion (for a pakeha) of what it is. _Mana_ sometimes means a more than natural virtue or power attaching to some person or thing, different from and independent of the ordinary natural conditions of either, and capable of either increase or diminution, both from known and unknown causes. The _mana_ of a priest or _tohunga_ is proved by the truth of his predictions, as well as the success of his incantations, _which same incantations, performed by another person, of inferior mana, would have no effect_. Consequently, this description of _mana_ is a virtue, or more than natural or ordinary condition attaching to the priest himself, and which he may become possessed of and also lose without any volition of his own. When "Apollo from his shrine, No longer could divine, The hollow steep of Delphos sadly leaving,"-- _Then_ the oracle had lost its _mana_.