Wise Man of the Arawa.

The Maori medicine man, the tohunga skilled in sacred rites and spells, and bush remedies and the laying-on of hands, is not by any means extinct. There is one at any rate in the Rotorua district who is an expert in the ancient lore and ceremonies, an old acquaintance and Maori-lore tutor of mine; he is over eighty now, and he is regarded in his district as the last real tohunga of the tribe. He is a wise man by heredity; his father, a high chief of Rotoiti, was a wonderful ancient, credited with magical powers. The tohunga aforetime revealed to me some curious facts about his initiation into the sacred circle of wise men. He was rendered immune against sickness and the witchcraft of rival tohungas by his elder Tuhoto Ariki, the celebrated old wizard who was buried in the Tarawera eruption in 1886, and resurrected alive after four days in a mud-buried hut.

Tuhoto, after reciting long prayers over his young kinsman (it was about seventy years ago) gave him a small black volcanic stone and bade him swallow it; it was a whakangungu, or “warding-off” symbol and talisman; it would preserve his mauri-ora, the life essence, and avert all harm from him. An ordinary stone might cause serious trouble in man's interior, my old friend admitted, but this was no ordinary stone; it was tapu'd and charmed by the great tohunga for the special purpose of preserving life.

“And so,” said he, “here I am safe and well to-day; I have never had an illness, and although I have been in battle in the Maori War days, I have never been harmed, and I intend to live to be a hundred.”

And the wise man probably will, too, for he is the stuff of which centenarians page 55 are made, and his faith in the ancient gods will carry him through.