Sickness also made the persons tapu. All diseases were supposed to be occasioned by atuas, or spirits, ngarara or lizards entering into the body of the afflicted; these therefore rendered the person sacred. The sick were removed from their own houses, and had sheds built for them in the bush at a considerable distance from the pa, where they lived apart. If any remained in their houses and died there, the dwelling became tapu, was painted over with red ochre, and could not again be used, which often put a tribe to great inconvenience, as some houses were the abode of perhaps thirty or forty different people. The wife of a chief falling ill, the missionaries took her into their hospital, where she laid for several days. At last her husband came and carried her away, saying, he was afraid of her dying there, lest the house should be made tapu, and thus hinder the missionaries from using it again. During the war, Maketu, a principal chief of the hostile natives, was shot in the house belonging to a settler, which he was then plundering; from that time it became tapu, and no heathen would enter it for years. The resting-places of great chiefs on a journey became tapu; if they were in the forest, the spots were cleared and surrounded with a fence of basket work, and names were given to them. This custom particularly applied to remarkable rocks or trees, to which karakia was made, and a little bundle of rushes was thrown as an offering to the spirit who was supposed to reside there, and the sacred object was smeared over with red ochre. A similar custom prevailed when corpses were carried to their final places of interment. The friends of the dead either carved an image, which they frequently clothed with their best garments, or tied some of the clothes of the dead to a neighbouring tree or to a pole; or else they painted some adjacent rock or stone with red ochre, to which they gave the name of the dead, and whenever they passed by addressed it as though their friend were alive and present, using the most endearing expressions, and casting some fresh garments on the figure as a token of their love. These were a kind of memorial similar to the painted windows in churches.