Page:Some Account of New Zealand.pdf/104

Rh tised in many islands of the Pacific Ocean. It appears to be merely intended to promote cheerfulness, but as their modes of expressing cheerfulness are unrefined by education, and unrestrained by the customs of the country, they frequently are such as to violate the laws of delicacy in point of gesture, grimace, and other accompaniments: they are, indeed, so faulty in this respect, that I shall not enter into a description of them.

The natives, like most other men in a state of nature, have no idea of half measures; thus, if they dance, they enter so much into the spirit of the amusement as to exhaust themselves by excessive fatigue. Rh