On Coming Near One Of The Huts I Was Much Amused By
Seeing In Due Form The Ceremony Of Rubbing, Or, As It Ought
To Be Called, Pressing Noses.
The women, on our first approach,
began uttering something in a most dolorous voice;
they then squatted themselves down and held up their faces;
my companion standing over them, one after another, placed
the bridge of his nose at right angles to theirs, and commenced
pressing.
This lasted rather longer than a cordial
shake of the hand with us, and as we vary the force of the
grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing. During
the process they uttered comfortable little grunts, very
much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbing
against each other. I noticed that the slave would press
noses with any one he met, indifferently either before or
after his master the chief. Although among the savages, the
chief has absolute power of life and death over his slave,
yet there is an entire absence of ceremony between them.
Mr. Burchell has remarked the same thing in Southern Africa,
with the rude Bachapins. Where civilization has
arrived at a certain point, complex formalities soon arise
between the different grades of society: thus at Tahiti all
were formerly obliged to uncover themselves as low as the
waist in presence of the king.
The ceremony of pressing noses having been duly completed
with all present, we seated ourselves in a circle in the
front of one of the hovels, and rested there half-an-hour.
All the hovels have nearly the same form and dimensions,
and all agree in being filthily dirty. They resemble a cow-
shed with one end open, but having a partition a little way
within, with a square hole in it, making a small gloomy
chamber. In this the inhabitants keep all their property,
and when the weather is cold they sleep there. They eat,
however, and pass their time in the open part in front. My
guides having finished their pipes, we continued our walk.
The path led through the same undulating country, the whole
uniformly clothed as before with fern. On our right hand
we had a serpentine river, the banks of which were fringed
with trees, and here and there on the hill sides there was a
clump of wood. The whole scene, in spite of its green colour,
had rather a desolate aspect. The sight of so much fern
impresses the mind with an idea of sterility: this, however,
is not correct; for wherever the fern grows thick and breast-
high, the land by tillage becomes productive. Some of the
residents think that all this extensive open country originally
was covered with forests, and that it has been cleared by fire.
It is said, that by digging in the barest spots, lumps of the
kind of resin which flows from the kauri pine are frequently
found. The natives had an evident motive in clearing the
country; for the fern, formerly a staple article of food,
flourishes only in the open cleared tracks.
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