"There was once a little orphan boy, who, in his anxiety to see his dead father once again, went out into the night when the kind spirits walk, and, in spite of all the fearful beating of his little heart, asked of every one whom he met: _Veni mè patri?_ and each one answered: _Appressu_. As he had the courage to hold out to the end, he finally had the consolation of seeing his father and having from him caresses and sweetmeats" (449. 327). Rev. Mr. Grill speaks highly of the affection for children of the Polynesians. Following is the translation of a song composed and sung by Rakoia, a warrior and chief of Mangaia, in the Hervey Archipelago, on the death of his eldest daughter Enuataurere, by drowning, at the age of fifteen (459. 32):-- "My first-born; where art thou? Oh that my wild grief for thee, Pet daughter, could be assuaged! Snatched away in time of peace. Thy delight was to swim, Thy head encircled with flowers, Interwoven with fragrant laurel And the spotted-leaved jessamine. Whither is my pet gone-- She who absorbed all my love-- She whom I had hoped To fill with ancestral wisdom? Red and yellow pandanus drupes Were sought out in thy morning rambles, Nor was the sweet-scented myrtle forgotten. Sometimes thou didst seek out Fugitives perishing in rocks and caves. Perchance one said to thee, 'Be mine, be mine, forever; For my love to thee is great.' Happy the parent of such a child! Alas for Enuataurere! Alas for Enuataurere! Thou wert lovely as a fairy! A husband for Enuataurere! Each envious youth exclaims: 'Would that she were mine!' Enuataurere now trips o'er the ruddy ocean. Thy path is the foaming crest of the billow. Weep for Enuataurere-- For Enuataurere." This song, though, published in 1892, seems to have been composed about the year 1815, at a _fête_ in honour of the deceased. Mr. Gill justly calls attention to the beauty of the last stanza but one, where "the spirit of the girl is believed to follow the sun, tripping lightly over the crest of the billows, and sinking with the sun into the underworld (Avaiki), the home of disembodied spirits." Among others of the lower races of men, we find the father, expressing his grief at the loss of a child, as tenderly and as sincerely as, if less poetically than, the Polynesian chief, though often the daughter is not so well honoured in death as is the son. Our American Indian tribes furnish not a few instances of such affectionate lamentation.