They were taught the tricks of the priestly wizard's trade, and became expert physiognomists, ventriloquists, and possibly, in some cases, hypnotists.

Public exhibitions afterwards tested the accuracy of their memories and their skill in witchcraft.

On this their fate depended.

A successful _Tohunga_, or wizard, lived on the fat of the land; a few failures, and he was treated with discredit and contempt.
Though so undoubted an authority as Mr.William Colenso sums up the old-time Maori as a secularist, it is not easy entirely to agree with him.

Not only had the Maori, as already indicated, an elaborate--too elaborate--mythology, but he had a code of equally wide and minute observances which he actually did observe.