Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0219
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[Page 219]
215.
Some account of New Zealand
Pompous ceremony as in the Islands is here kept secret We never saw so much as a grave where any one had been interrd; nor were they always alike in the accounts they gave of the manner of disposing of dead bodies in the Northern parts they told us that they buried them in the ground & in the southern said that they threw them into the sea having first tied to them a sufficient weight to cause their sinking howsoever they disposd of the dead their regret for the loss of them was sufficiently
[Margin note] Mourning
visible few or none were without scarrs & some had them hideously large on their cheeks arms thighs legs &c. which proceeded from the cuts they had given themselves during their mourning I have seen several with such wounds of which the blood was not yet staunchd & one only a woman while she was cutting herself & lamenting. She wept much repeating many sentences in a plaintive tone of voice at every one of which she with a shell cut a gash in some part of her body she however contrivd her cutts in such a manner that few of them drew blood & those that did penetrated