GHOULISH PRACTICES. Grave-digging Vandals.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 165, 29 August 1903, Page 8

GHOULISH PRACTICES. Grave-digging Vandals.

THE Maoris w ere once cannibals, and, if we are to believe common report, actual photogiaphs, and Captaan Mair, many pakehas are still ghouls. The grave of a deceased Maori is evidently less sacred than that of a deceased pakeha to the ignoble army of relic-hunters who have made "no bones" about desecrating the last resting-place of the aborigines of this country. Nothing is more sacred to the surviving Maori than the grave of his ancestors. * *■ * The awful wholesale desecration of graves m Glasgow last year, the recent outrages 'in the interests of science" in Adelaide, are several degrees less heinous as ciimes than the insatiable curiosity that leads a man to open up a Maori grave m search of relics. Captain Mair pointed out, as \\ c have previously done, that were the Maoris to commit a similar offence in an European cemetery, public indignation would be roused. Fortunately, the Maoris reverence the dead, and are still too supeistitious to do anything of the kind. * -t * The sordid spa it manifested in these ghoulish practices, and recording the outrages by photographs, is perhaps the worst feature. Surely, the pride of a tourist's friends in England or elsewhere would be excessive when they were presented with a photograph showing their relatives in the guise of grave robbers ' * *• * Parliament has done nothing of any consequence during the present session, and, as it has been pointed out that no law exists for the punishment of curi-osity-mongers, a bill making the burgling of graves a punishable offence is surely worthy of as much notice as the Dramatic Copyright Bill for instance. What the fellings of surviving Maoris must be when they find the graves of their deceased relatives rifled is easily imagined. They might with perfect justice hate their white brothers, whose object cannot be understood by a race who honour the dead and their i esting-places above everything.