TE HEU-HEU
Like a filled sponge is the air lying over the pa, heavy and sorrowful—filled with desolate cries. Dismal wails issue from the groups which surround the dead chief, men and women howling, dancing, and distorting their faces.
The wailing lies like a cloud upon the earth, and hangs like fog around the groups. A sharp shriek pierces the air, or a shouted sentence in honour of the dead chief cuts the fog; and again everything unites into a monotonous, heart-breaking lament.
The dead chief was a Rangatira-Tohunga, and deep is the sorrow of his people from the mountains and his people from the lake. The women of his next relatives cut their breasts with sharp-edged shells, bleeding, and howling in their pain and sorrow.
Tribe upon tribe nears with dismal lament: all are received by the old women with the long-drawn, piercing cry of welcome to the Tangi. The women march in front; they have flowers wound around their heads, and wave flowers and twigs and leaves in their outstretched arms up and down, up and down—a sign of sorrow. Crying and sobbing follow the men, whose heads are bent and whose gestures betoken the deepest grief—warlike figures, with tattoed faces bestrewn with tears.
In long lines they approach. Canoe after canoe brings ever new hapus (parties), and each approaches in a long line loudly howling: louder and louder grow the howls till the hapu stands before the dead chief, who is covered with the red feather-mat of his rank; and there the whole mass of people is uniting in terrible dirge, dancing and distorting their faces, in which each new arrival joins. All nature seems to lament: the wide lake, the hills, the forests upon the hills and the cloud-covered heads of the mountains—all is united in grief.
Slowly night descends and covers the dirge in darkness.