Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

588 SICK NETS BURIAL. DeC. natives, which they appeared to relish as much as hay : they were called ' booa-cow.''* At the door of a house, or rather in the porch (before des- cribed), I saw a woman reading : she was sick, Mr. Baker told me, one of a long list of invalids, who frequently applied to the missionaries for advice and medicine. I looked at her, book, it was the Gospel of St. Matthew, printed at Paihia, in the New Zealand language. Now, certainly, there was neither constraint, nor any thing savouring of outward show, in this woman's occupation, for my seeing her was sudden, and quite accidental, arising from my going out of the usual path to look at the oxen. Mr. Baker told me, that one of the most trou- blesome, though not the least gratifying duties, of the mis- sionaries, was that of attempting to act as medical men. No regularly educated practitioner having at that time established himself in the land, every complaint was entrusted to the kind attention, and good will, but slight medical know- ledge of the missionaries. We saw several nets for fishing placed in separate heaps, each upon a small platform, at the top of a post eight or ten feet in height : in a similar manner yams and potatoes are preserved from the rotting influence of the damp earth. The nets are made with the split leaves of the * flax "' plant, not merely with the fibres, and last for many years : both they and the food, thus exposed to the air, are thatched, like the houses, with the broad leaves of an iris-like rush, or flag, which grows abundantly by the river sides, and in marshy places. I was here informed, that after the bodies of the dead (which are exposed to the air, on platforms similar to those I have just mentioned), are thoroughly dried, the bones are carried away, and deposited in a secret burying place. S5th. Being Christmas-day, several of our party attended Divine service at Paihia, where Mr. Baker officiated. Very few natives were present ; but all the respectable part of the * Literally cow-pig. Before white men brought others, pigs were the only domestic animals known in Polynesia besides dogs : — and when a cow first appeared in a ship, she was called cow-booa, or booa-cow.