Domestic sketches. Plate 59. From the book: The New Zealanders

PLATE LIX.

DOMESTIC ECONOMY: WOMEN MAKING MATS, &c.

1. A sketch at Kaitote, on the Waikato, showing a cooking-house, with a couple of old women performing the ceremony of ongi, or pressing noses.

2. An aged woman of Te Mutu, making a basket of the leaves of the tawara (Freycinetia Banksii).

3. A slave woman, preparing potatoes by scraping them with a mussel shell. The potato forms the principal article of food amongst the New Zealanders, and much of their time is employed in its cultivation.

4. Interior of a house at Rangihaeata's pah at Porirua, with women engaged in manufacturing flax garments. The pole in the foreground, with a carved image beneath, supports the ridge-pole of the building.

5. Tangi, or crying of welcome. When friends meet, they cry together for some time: then succeeds the ongi, or pressing noses, as shown in figure 6. Both these sketches are from life, and were made near Taupiri, on the Waikato river.

Text for plate 59: The New Zealanders illustrated / by George French Angas. -- London: Thomas M'Lean, 1847 (RB001054)