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Particular individuals and places would also seem to have their own gods. When the "Active" was in the river Thames, a gale of wind, by which the ship was attacked, was attributed by the natives on board to the anger of the god of Shoupah,[[BM]] the Areekee who resided in the neighbourhood. Kórro-korro, who was among them said that as soon as he got on shore he would endeavour to prevail upon the Areekee to propitiate the offended deity. When Marsden asked the people of Kiperro[[BN]] if they
knew anything of their god, or ever had any communication with him, they replied that they often heard him whistle. The chiefs, too, are often called atuas, or gods, even while they are alive. The aged chief, Tarra,[[BO]] maintained to one of the missionaries that the god of thunder resided in his forehead; and Shungie and Okeda[[BP]] asserted that they were possessed by gods of the sea.
The part of the heavens in which the gods reside is represented as beautiful in the extreme. "When the clouds are beautifully chequered," writes Kendal, "the atua above, it is supposed, is planting sweet potatoes. At the season when these are planted in the ground, the planters dress themselves in their best raiment, and say that, as atuas on earth, they are imitating the atua in heaven."
The New Zealanders believe that the souls of the higher orders among them are immortal; but they hold that when the "cookees" die they perish for ever. The spirit, they think, leaves the body the third day after death, till which time it hovers round the corpse, and hears very well whatever is said to it. But they hold also, it would seem, that there is a separate immortality for each of the eyes of the dead person; the left, as before-mentioned, ascending to heaven and becoming a star, and the other, in the shape of a spirit, taking flight for the Reinga. Reinga signifies, properly, the place of flight; and is said, in some of the accounts, to be a rock or a mountain at the North Cape from which, according to others, the spirits descend into the next world through the sea. The notion which the New Zealanders really entertain as to this matter appears to be that the spirits first leap from the North Cape into the sea, and thence emerge into an Elysium situated in the islands of the Three Kings. The submarine path to the blissful region of the New Zealanders is less intricate than that of the Huron of America:—
"To the country of the Dead,
Long and painful is thy way!
O'er rivers wide and deep
Lies the road that must be past,
By bridges narrow-wall'd,