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50 JOHN RUTHERFORD custom for the women, on the approach of any one to whom they wished to show especial fidelity, to crouch down on their heels, and, spreading their hands over their faces, to remain for a considerable time in that pos ture, howling in a sort of cadence, and shedding tears. Among the Sioux, again, it was the duty of the men to perform this ceremony of lamen tation on such occasions, which they did standing, and laying their hands on the heads of their visitors. In some cases, the wounds which the New Zealand women inflict on themselves are intended to express their grief for friends who have perished in war; and probably this may have been a reason for the strong exhibition of feeling in the instance just noticed by Rutherford, as the chiefs had then returned from an expedition. Such a mode of mourning has been often observed in New Zealand. During the time that Cruise was at the Bay of Islands, they found one day, upon going on shore, that a body of the natives had just returned from a war expedition, in which they had taken considerable numbers of prisoners, consisting of men, women, and children, some of the latter of whom were not two years old; and among the women was one, distinguished by her superior beauty, who sat apart from the rest upon the beach, and, though silent, seemed buried in affliction. They learned that her father, a chief of some consequence, had