closure. This is the regular manner of
interment in New Zealand for any one belonging to a chief's family. When
a slave dies, a hole is dug, and the body is thrown into it without any
ceremony; nor is it ever disinterred again, or any further notice taken
of it. They never eat any person who dies of disease, or in the course
of nature."

Thus left alone among these savages, and taught by the murder of his
comrade on how slight a tenure he held his own life, exposed as he was
every moment to the chance of in some way or other provoking their
capricious cruelty, Rutherford, it may be thought, must have felt his
protracted detention growing every day more insupportable.

One of the greatest inconveniences which he now began to feel arose from
the wearing out of his clothes, which he patched and tacked as well as
he could for some time, but at last, after he had been about three years
in the country, they would hold together no longer. All that he had to
wear, therefore, was a white flax mat, which was given to him by the
chief, and which, being thrown over his shoulders, came as low as his
knees. This, he says, was his only garment, and he was compelled to go
both bareheaded and barefooted, having neither hat, shoes, nor
stockings.

His life, meanwhile, seems to have been varied by few incidents
deserving of being recorded, and we are left to suppose that he spent
his time principally in shooting and fishing, as before.

For the first sixteen months of his residence at the village, he kept a
reckoning of days by notches on a stick; but when he afterwards moved
about with the chiefs, he neglected this mode of tracing the progress of
time.

[Illustration: Flute, made from the arm or thigh-bone of an enemy.]

"At last, it happened one day," the narrative proceeds, "while we were
all assembled at a feast in our village, that Aimy called me to him,
in the presence of several more chiefs, and, having told them of my
activity in shooting and fishing, concluded by saying that he wished to
make me a chief, if I would give my consent.

"This I readily did: upon which my hair was immediately cut with an
oyster shell in the front, in the same manner as the chiefs have theirs
cut; and several of the chiefs made me a present of some mats, and
promised to send me some pigs the next day. I now put on a mat covered
over with red ochre and oil, such as was worn by the other chiefs; and
my head and face were also anointed with the sa