er neck, and applied his nose to hers, the two continued in this
posture for some minutes, talking together in a low and mournful voice;
and then disengaging themselves, they gave vent to their feelings by
weeping bitterly, the chief remaining for about a quarter of an hour
leaning on his musket, while the big drops continued to roll down his
cheeks.

The old woman's daughter, who had come along with her, then made her
approach, and another scene, if possible of still more tumultuous
tenderness than the former, took place between the two cousins. The
chief hung, as before, in an agony of affection, on the neck of his
relation; and "as for the woman," says Nicholas, "she was so affected
that the mat she wore was literally soaked through with her tears." A
passionate attachment to friends is, indeed, one of the most prevailing
feelings of the savage state. Dampier tells us of an Indian who
recovered his friend unexpectedly on the island of Juan Fernandez, and
who immediately prostrated himself on the ground at his feet. "We stood
gazing in silence," says the manly sailor, "at this tender scene."

The house of the chief to which Rutherford and his comrades were taken
was the largest in the village, being both long and wide, although very
low, and having no other entrance than an aperture, which was shut by
means of a sliding door, and was so much lower even than the roof that
it was necessary to crawl upon the hands and knees to get through it.

Two large pigs and a quantity of potatoes were now cooked; and when they
were ready, a portion having been allotted to the slaves, who are never
permitted to eat along with the chiefs, the latter sat down to their
repast, the white men taking their places beside them.

The feast was not held within the house, but in the open air; and the
meat that was not consumed was hung up on posts for a future occasion.
One of the strongest prejudices of the New Zealanders is an aversion to
be where any article of food is suspended over their heads; and on this
account, they never permit anything eatable to be brought within their
huts, but take all their meals out of doors, in an open space adjoining
to the house, which has been called by some writers the kitchen, it
being there that the meal is cooked as well as eaten. Crozet says that
every one of these kitchens has in it a cooking hole, dug in the
ground, of about two feet in diameter, and between one and two feet
deep. Even when the nat