All were seated cross-legged around the marae, glistening from head to foot with scented oil, and decked off with beads, garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, and whatever else their varying fancy might suggest for the joyous occasion.  In a house close by the bride was seated.  A pathway from this house to the marae, in front of where the bridegroom sits, was carpeted with fancy native cloth; and, all being ready, the bride, decked off with beads, a garland of flowers or fancy shells, and girt round the waist with fine mats, flowing in a train five or six feet behind her, moved slowly along towards the marae.  She was followed along the carpeted pathway by a train of young women, dressed like herself, each bearing a valuable mat, half spread out, holding it to the gaze of the assembly; and, when they reached the bridegroom, the mats were laid down before him.  They then returned to the house for more, and went on renewing the procession and display until some fifty or a hundred fine mats and two or three hundred pieces of native cloth were heaped before the bridegroom.  This was the dowry.  The bride then advanced to the bridegroom and sat down.  By-and-by she rose up before the assembly, and was received with shouts of applause, and, as a further expression of respect, her immediate friends, young and old, took up stones and beat themselves until their heads were bruised and bleeding.  The obscenity to prove her virginity which preceded this burst of feeling will not bear the light of description.  Then followed a display of the oloa (or property) which the bridegroom presented to the friends of the bride.  Then they had dinner, and after that, the distribution of the property.  The father, or, failing him, the brother or sister of the father of the bridegroom, had the disposal of the tonga which formed the dowry; and on the other hand, the father or brother of the bride had the disposal of the property which was given by the bridegroom.  Night-dances and their attendant immoralities wound up the ceremonies.

The marriage ceremonies of common people passed off in a house, and with less display; but the same obscene form was gone through to which we have referred—­a custom which, doubtless, had some influence in cultivating chastity, especially among young women of rank.  There was a fear of disgracing themselves and their friends, and a dread of a severe beating from the latter after the ceremony to which the faithless bride was sometimes subjected, almost as if the letter of the Mosaic law had been carried out upon her.

But there were many marriages without any such ceremonies at all.  If there was a probability that the parents would not consent, from disparity of rank or other causes, an elopement took place; and, if the young man was a chief of any importance, a number of his associates mustered in the evening, and walked through the settlement, singing his praises and shouting out the name of the person with whom he had eloped.  This was sometimes the first intimation the parents had of it, and, however mortified they might be, it was too late.  After a time, if the couple continued to live together, their friends acknowledged the union by festivities and an exchange of property.