the sick through the curative properties of herbs and other drugs; their
remedies consisted not in medicine but in exorcism: instead of a
physician they sent for a priest, who by his spells and incantations
undertook to drive the dangerous sprite from the body of the patient and
to appease the ancestral spirit, whose wrath was believed to be the
cause of all the mischief. If the deity proved recalcitrant and
obstinately declined to accept this notice to quit, they did not
hesitate to resort to the most threatening and outrageous language,
sometimes telling him that they would kill and eat him, and at others
that they would burn him to a cinder if he did not take himself off at
once and allow the patient to recover.[124] Curiously enough, the
spirit which preyed on the vitals of a sick man was supposed to assume
the form of a lizard; hence these animals, especially a beautiful green
species which the Maoris called _kakariki_, were regarded with fear and
horror by the natives.[125] Once when a Maori of Herculean thews and
sinews was inadvertently shown some green lizards preserved in a bottle
of spirits, his massive frame shrank back as from a mortal wound, and
his face betrayed signs of extreme horror. An aged chief in the room, on
learning what was the matter, cried out, "I shall die! I shall die!" and
crawled away on hands and knees; while the other man gallantly
interposed himself as a bulwark between the fugitive and the green gods
(_atuas_) in the bottle, shifting his position adroitly so as to screen
the chief till he was out of range of the deities.[126] An old man once
assured a missionary very seriously that in attending to a sick person
he had seen the god come out of the sufferer's mouth in the form of a
lizard, and that from the same moment the patient began to mend and was
soon restored to perfect health.[127]

[124] E. Shortland, _The Southern Districts of New Zealand_, pp.
30 _sq._, 294 _sq._; _id._, _Traditions and Superstitions of the
New Zealanders_, pp. 114 _sqq._; _id._, _Maori Religion and
Mythology_, 31 _sq._; W. Yate, _An Account of New Zealand_, pp.
141 _sq._ Most malignant and dangerous of all appear to have
been thought the spirits of abortions or still-born infants. See
Elsdon Best, "The Lore of the _Whare-Kohanga_," _Journal of the
Polynesian Society_, vol. xv. no. 57 (March 1906), pp. 12-15;
_Reise der Oesterreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde,
Anth