That is the way Mrs Greendays generally nips any exciting story in the bud!
Friday, 9th.—We had planned another fishing excursion for to-day, but I allowed the Greendays to go without me, for a more entertaining occupation made me change my mind and stay behind. I was at the Maori village adjoining Rotorua, Ohinemutu, taking photographs until it was time to start when, by some inadvertence, I was taken by a little Maori girl of whom I had asked some question into the meeting house. Thinking that she was going to show me the carvings I followed readily, but to my horror found, when we got inside, that a tangi, the same sort of function as an Irish wake, was in the earliest stage of proceeding. It seemed that an old chief had died suddenly while in the hot pool taking his morning bath a few hours earlier, and now here he was, stretched on a sleeping mat on the floor. All round him crouched his feminine relatives, discussing his virtues in a low crooning voice, the tears running down their cheeks while they fanned him to keep the flies from his uncovered face.
It was a shock to be suddenly ushered into this place of mourning, although the poor fellow looked very happy and peaceful, his hands crossed on his breast. And I went out intending to hurry away to the wharf and get as far as possible from the scene of the tragedy. But on the way I met a local man, who told me the story of what had happened, and added that word had gone forth to all the surrounding villages, and that if I wished to see a characteristic sight I ought to stay and see the Maoris arrive.
It was too good a chance to be missed, so I hid myself in a corner whence I could see everybody who came to Ohinemutu without being too much in evidence myself, and very soon they began to arrive. Some of them almost came up to my preconceived ideas of what a Maori proper should be like, ideas so sadly disabused since I had met them. But only a very few came anywhere near my hopeful expectations. I had imagined soldierly-looking men and graceful, houri-eyed women, whereas most of them proved to be unwieldily fat, and the women pretty only while they were quite young. And the European dress, adopted almost universally by both men and women, emphasized the peculiarity of their figures, the very long backs and short legs, which would probably not be noticeable in their native attire. But this they only don nowadays on special occasions and when they want to be photographed, when they put it on over the European clothes!
To-day they came straggling along the roads in ones and twos and little family parties. The women rode astride unkempt nags, sometimes two on one pony, their pipes in their mouths, their coarse and uncared-for hair in long untidy locks falling round their necks from under home-made Panama-shaped hats worn at the back of their heads and decorated with green leaves in token of their errand. Some came in carts, with enough bedding and paraphernalia to suggest a month’s stay, and I learned afterwards that these tangis often do last for a long while, their duration depending upon the amount of money the
