and least understood where the affections are like flowers, opened prematurely by the storm, rent, scattered, blighted, and trampled on, before they have time to discover half their

sweetness.

"Among the women there was one who excited particular interest: she was young and handsome; and though the other prisoners occasionally talked among themselves, she sat silent and alone, and appeared lost in affliction. We learned that her father, who had been a chief of some consequence at the river Thames, was killed by the man whose prisoner she now was; and we observed him sitting at no great distance from her during the greater part of the day. He was the brother of Towi, the principal person at Rangehoo, and was a singularly fine-looking youth. The extraordinary scenes that we witnessed detained us in the neighbourhood of Tippoona until evening; and, as we were preparing to return to the ship, we were drawn to that part of the beach where the prisoners were, by the most doleful cries and lamentations. Here was the interesting young slave in a situation that ought to have softened the heart of the most unfeeling.

"The man who had slain her father, having cut off his head, and preserved it by a process peculiar to these islanders, took it out of a basket where it had hitherto been concealed, and threw it into the lap of the unhappy daughter. At once she seized it with a degree of frenzy not to be described, pressed its inanimate nose to her own, and held it in this position until her tears ran over every part of it. She then laid it down, and with a bit of a sharp shell disfigured her person in so shocking a manner, that in a few minutes not a vestige of her former beauty remained. She first began by cutting her arms, then her breasts, and latterly her face. Every incision was so deep as to cause a gush of blood; but she seemed quite insensible to pain, and performed the operation with heroic resolution.

"He whose cruelty had caused this frightful exhibition, was evidently amused at the horror with which we viewed it; and laying hold of the head by the hair, which was long and black, offered to sell it to us for an axe, turned it in various ways to show it off to the best advantage; and when no purchaser was to be found, replaced it in the basket from whence he had taken it. The fea tures were as perfect as when in life; and though the daughter was quite grown up, the head of her father appeared to be that of a youthful and handsome man." P. 42.

A parallel case of horror, is to be found in Gibbon. Alboin, king of the Lombards, being enamoured of the daughter of Cunimund, king of the Gepeda, and unable otherwise to obtain her in marriage, fought with, and slew her father, whose skull he fashioned into a drinking cup.

"After draining many capacious bowls of Rhætian or Falernian wine, he called for the skull of Cunimund, the noblest and most

precious ornament of his side-board. The cup of victory was accepted with horrid applause by the circle of the Lombard chiefs. "Fill it again with wine," exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, " fill it to the brim; carry this goblet to the queen, and request, in my name, that she would rejoice with her father." In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamond had strength to utter, "Let the will of my lord be obeyed!" and touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin." Decline and Fall, Vol. viii. p. 12.

- The Zealander lady it would seem, was, in like manner, married to the destroyer of her parent.

The method of preserving heads, after decapitation, is

curious.

"When the head has been separated from the body, and the whole of the interior of it extracted, it is rolled up in leaves, and put into a kind of oven, made of heated stones laid in a hole in the ground, and covered over with earth. The temperature is very moderate, and the head is baked or steamed until all the moisture, which is frequently wiped away, has exuded; after which it is left in a current of air until perfectly dry. Some of these preserved heads were brought to England: the features, hair, and teeth were as perfect as in life; nor have they since shown any symptoms of decay." P. 50.

Our author frequently speaks of large flocks of wild ducks, occurring in these parts, while Captain Cook, on the other hand, says that they are very rare. No doubt both are right. These birds migrating to and from the adjacent islands, would necessarily be subject to various contingencies, which may either increase or diminish their numbers. In Cook's first voyage they appear to have been more plentiful.

Wangarooa, in this island, has become famous (we should use its antithesis rather) for the destruction of the Boyd, an English merchant-man that put into the harbour in order to obtain a loading of spars. She had on board certain New Zealanders, who, by their own account, being provoked at the harsh treatment they experienced, decoyed the captain with the greater part of his crew into the woods, and there murdered them. They afterwards found means to get possession of the vessel; but one of the natives desirous of trying the excellence of a quantity of gun-powder which had been found in the ship, filled the pan of a musket and flashed it over the cask. The explosion occasioned by this circumstance, destroyed all on board; and the hull, broken from its moorings, floated into shallow water, where it still continues. In Wangarooa (as in some other parts of New Zealand) is a singular arch-way, formed by a natural

excavation of the solid rock, under which the sea rolls. The description given of it by Captain Cook, (which is also accompanied with an engraving), is much more minute and happy, than that furnished by our author. If the mind figure to itself a bridge, comprehending one vast but jagged arch, and thrown across a valley through which a broad river dashes; while on either hand precipitous hills crowned with forest trees, rise upon the view; and rocks, over which numerous cascades leap sparkling downward, some idea may be conveyed to it, of this vagary of nature.

Hogs and potatoes now form a great article of commerce in this island. Neither, however, are indigenous, but were left with the inhabitants by early navigators. Their potatoes have a luscious flavour, and are described as palatable and nourishing. The natives hold them in high esteem.

They do not appear at all uniform in disposing of their dead. Captain Cook states, that he discovered the corpse of a woman floating in the sea. When the people were questioned respecting it, they said, that "she was a relation who had died a natural death; and that according to their custom they had tied a stone to the body and thrown it into the sea; which stone, they supposed, had by some accident been disengaged."-Hawkesworth's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 389. And he further adds, that a kind of cross erected over the body of an individual, was the only burial he heard of. What was the nature of this particular interment, he could not ascertain. Captain Cruise tells us, that during a ramble, they accidentally entered a burying-ground.

"In the centre of the enclosure stood a kind of stage, roofed over like a house, and on it were laid several small canoes. In one were the remains of a child, rolled up in a mat, but they were not quite decayed; and in another was a heap of bones, with a skull placed upon the top of it. The natives say, that when people die, the bodies are buried until the flesh is rotted off the bones; but what we saw this day, with other circumstances, sufficiently evinces that there are exceptions to this practice; and that among this extraordinary people, the same inconsistency prevails in the disposal of the dead, which is observed in many of their customs." P. 135.

The operation of the Amaco, or tattooing, is curious; but we have not room for an extract. The unhappy predilection of these people for human flesh, must ever be a source of regret; and the first steps which are made towards their civilization, will, we hope, be the abolition of this most revolting

Chiefly by Captain Furneaux and Captain Cook.

practice, which does not appear to have yet received any material check.. The limbs only of a man are eaten; but with the exception of the head, the whole body of a woman or a child is reckoned very delicious fare. The people are professedly vindictive, and watch an opportunity for revenge, with that determined patience, which seldom fails to effect it. Ever on the alert, their whole life consists either in the endeavour to repel an evil, or to inflict one: they stand

"Like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start,”

and the invincible constancy with which they pursue an object, is only equalled by the cunning which they exert in the attainment. Like all uncivilized and ignorant people, their superstition is as whimsical as gross. They abandon their houses to eat; and on cutting their hair refrain from every sort of food. When the wind is high, they fancy that the voices of their deceased relations mingle with the blast, and address them in lamentation. They who become the victims of a diabolical appetite, it is generally believed, are doomed to eternal fire, while those who indulged it, ascend to the mansion of the gods. They worship the sun, moon, and stars, and even the wind, when they find themselves in peril from its violence. They believe in a Supreme Being, denominated Atua, or the incomprehensible, In their wars they give no quarter, excited to it perhaps by the cannibal feasts which afterwards regale them. To make their appearance more terrible to their enemies, they smear the whole body with a kind of red paint, mixed up with oil, and arm themselves with spears, bayonets, pattoo-pattoos, (wooden battle-axes) and mearées (stone clubs), with now and then a few muskets, of which they are extremely proud, and covet beyond every other species of property. Of course, they are not very dexterous marksmen, and their supplies of ammuni. tion are equally scanty. It is surprising, as Captain Cook has remarked, that they comprehend not the use of bows and arrows-these being commonly the weapons most familiar to all barbarous nations; and indeed the most obvious and simple mode of distant warfare.

Their dress is composed of mats, woven by the females, of a silky kind of flax. They are thrown across the shoulders and bound with a thong of dogskin about the waist. The head is wholly uncovered, which produces, it is thought, a very prevalent disease in the eye. They surmount the hair,

* See an anecdote to this effect in Captain Cook's "Voyage to the Pacific Ocean." P. 139.

however, with a feather of the Gaunet or Albatross. This dress is common to both sexes. The women are considerably less tatooed than the men; and, in general, they are fair and handsome.

On the whole, though we are not disposed to "rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison," the author of the volume before us, yet we think that it might have been a much more creditable performance than it is. We should have been glad to see a few judicious reflections stand in the place of "13th, Thursday, fine, thermometer 60°, squally, with lightning and rain during the night. July 17th, Monday, fine, thermometer 50°, wind S.with frost; squally, with rain during the night," &c. &c. These things would become the labours of the venerable Philomath, Francis Moore, or occupy a very deserving post in the original journal; but the public desire entertainment combined with instruction; and if from the many pages of this "goodly stuff" they can draw either one or the other, they do, as the Alchymists of old were marvellously ambitious of doing-convert pewter and tin, and the like base metals, into "much fine gold." They may have it for their pains.

ART. IX. The new Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, considered on Principles understood and acknowledged equally by Jews and Christians; with an Enquiry into the Origin of the Gospels, and the Authenticity of the Epistles of Paul. 8vo. 89 pp. 2s. 6d. Hunt. 1823.

Of late years, the Deistical press in this country has been so notoriously subservient to revolutionary purposes, that we may well stand excused for not having noticed many of the attacks which have been made on the evidences of Christianity. It would have been little short of insanity, on our part, to have given any unnecessary publicity to such attempts to undermine the happy constitution under which we live, and thus to have been deceived by that thin veil of pretence and falsehood, which, under the mask of inquiring into the evidences of Revelation, sought only to degrade and destroy the British Constitution.

Nor can we be reasonably blamed for having omitted to notice some other publications which, leaving political topics untouched, have been so outrageously violent and blasphemous, as to create disquiet in the minds of all sober and