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Vehiatua had dispatched to the mountains, the night before, a brace of his piimato, or climbers of cliffs. The office of these men was hereditary, and every chief kept one or two of them to fetch the skulls of his ancestors when required for some religious ceremony, and to return them afterwards to the secret caves, high up on the cliffs, where they were kept secure from desecration by hostile hands. The piimato carried in each hand a short pointed stick of ironwood, and with the aid of these they climbed up and down vertical walls of rock to which a lizard could scarcely cling. The skulls of Vehiatua’s ancestors were to be witnesses of the religious ceremony presently to take place.

When the ceremony of the bride’s reception in my house was over, we paraded slowly back to the house of Vehiatua, and went through a precisely similar ceremony there, even to the bloodletting and the folded sheets. This marked my reception into the house of Tehani’s family. We next sat down to a feast, the men apart from the women, which lasted till mid-afternoon.