on any more description, but merely say that the male undertaker, such as I have described him, would be an Apollo, in comparison with one of these hags. What will my kind reader say when I tell him that I myself once got _tapu'd_ with this same horrible, most horrible, style of _tapu_? I hold it to be a fact that there is not one man in New Zealand but myself who has a clear understanding of what the word "excommunication" means: indeed I did not understand what it meant till I got _tapu'd_. I was returning with about sixty men from a journey along the west coast, and was a short distance in advance of the party, when I came to where the side of a hill had fallen down on to the beach and exposed a number of human bones. There was a large skull rolling about in the water, and I took up this skull without consideration, carried it to the side of the hill, scraped a hole, and covered it up. Just as I had finished burying it up came my friends, and I saw at once, by the astonishment and dismay depicted on their countenances, that I had committed some most unfortunate act. They soon let me know that the hill had been a burial-place of their tribe, and jumped at once to the conclusion that the skull was the skull of one of their most famous chiefs; whose name they told me. They informed me also that I was no longer fit company for human beings, and begged me to fall to the rear and keep my distance. They told me all this from a very respectful distance, and if I made a step towards them, they all ran as if I had been infected by the plague. This was an awkward state of things, but as it could not be helped, I voted myself _tapu_, and kept clear of my friends till night.