PECULIAR CUSTOMS.

Evening Star, Issue 4316, 27 December 1876, Page 4

PECULIAR CUSTOMS.

At a meeting in aid of the Wesleyan Home Mission Fund, recently held in Auckland, the Rev. J. Brown gave an interesting and amusing account of his experiences among the natives of the islands. The following is an extract: "He described a custom existing amongst the natives analogous to Freemasonry. They took young chiefs of fourteen or fifteen into the bush and led them on pork and turtle for a time, and when they came out they were not allowed to eat the same kind of food" for the rest of their lives, They were initiated into certain mysteries. So strict were they afterwards that even when starving for want of food they would not touch pork, and the young man whom he had brought with him would not touch tares which had come over in the same vessel with the pigs. When the natives go into mourning they blacken their faces. Whenever a native was inflamed with feelings of revenge against anotlurhe would not wash his face until he had gratified his spite. When a woman quarreled wtih her husband, or any other relative, she would go to the bush and place lit-slf in the way of thewild tiihes so as to get killed, in order to spite her friends. This was

their way of committing suicide. The natives were great believers in the efficacy of love philtres. They believe that certain plants, prepared and administered in a certain way, would captivate the affections of any young lady, and even the affections of a married woman could be transferred from her lawful husband to another man. A snake's tail was supposed to possess this property in a peculiar degree.