as often
happened, his departed spirit entered the stones of the oven in which
his body had been cooked, and the stones retained their heat so long as
the ghost was in them. Meanwhile his sorrowing friends at home recited
their most potent spells to draw his soul out of the oven and back to
the sacred grove (_wahi tapu_) the burial-place of his people; for
otherwise the soul could find no repose, but must roam about for ever,
wreaking its spite on the living, for all disembodied spirits were
deemed malicious. Hence after a battle, if people could not obtain the
body of a slain friend, they sought to procure at least some drops of
his blood or shreds of his raiment, that by crooning over them the
appropriate spell they might draw home the vagrant spirit to his place
of rest. The burial-grounds were regarded with awe and fear, for
sometimes a restless ghost would break bounds and spread sickness among
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Within their sacred precincts
stood altars or stages for offerings to the gods, and any living man who
entered them did so at his peril. For the same reason no one would set
foot in a house where a dead man or woman had been buried. Hence in
nearly every village half the houses stood empty and deserted, falling
into decay, tenanted only by ghosts. The living had constantly before
their eyes the mansions of the dead.[66]

[66] R. Taylor, _Te Ika A Maui_, p. 221.

The common belief of the Maoris seems to have been that the souls of the
dead pass away to a region of the underworld, which was sometimes called
Po and sometimes Reinga. Properly speaking, Po was night or the
primaeval darkness out of which all forms of life and light were evolved
or created;[67] and Reinga was not so much the spirit land itself as the
leaping-off place where the souls bade good-bye to earth and took their
departure for the far country. This leaping-off place was at the North
Cape, the Land's End of New Zealand. The cape terminates in a steep
cliff with a sea-cave at its foot, into which the tide rushes with a
thunderous roar. There the evil spirit Wiro is thought to dwell, lurking
for his prey; for he battens on such of the passing souls of the dead as
he can get into his clutches. On their passage to the North Cape the
ghosts stop by the way at two hills; at the first, which is called
Wai-hokimai, they wail, cut themselves, and strip off their clothes; at
the second, which is called Wai-otioti, they turn