ghost during the night, and had been informed, by the atua, that if he went to a certain place to which he was then about to proceed, he would die in a few days. He soon, however, got so far the better of his fears as, notwithstanding this alarming intimation, to venture to accom pany Marsden to the forbidden district; and he expressed his feelings of contempt for the sacred order in no measured terms, when he found that at the expiration of the predicted period he was still alive. He said that there were too many priests at New Zealand, and that they “tabooed” and prayed the people to death. Others, as well as the priests, however, are supposed sometimes to have the power of witchcraft. Two of the missionaries, when one day about to land at a place a short distance from the settlement, were alarmed by nearly running the boat’s head on three human bodies, which lay close together by the water’s edge among some rushes; and upon inquiry they were informed that they were the bodies of three slaves who had been killed that morning for makootooing a chief, i.e. betwitching or praying evil prayers against him, which had caused his death.* A common method which the priests use of bewitching those whom they mean to destroy, is to curse them, which is universally believed to have a fatal effect. The curse seems usually *Tho maketu, which is correctly described here, was one of the most firmly established institutions in New Zealand in old times.