But his business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here.  The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt ‘taboo’) has to be declared, and who was to declare it?  Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horse-back?  He might plant palm branches:  it did not in the least follow that the spot was sacred.  He might recite the spell:  it was shrewdly supposed the spirits would not hearken.  And so the old, legitimate cannibal must ride over the mountains to do it for him; and the respectable official in white clothes could but look on and envy.  At about the same time, though in a different manner, Kooamua established a forest law.  It was observed the cocoa-palms were suffering, for the plucking of green nuts impoverishes and at last endangers the tree.  Now Kooamua could tapu the reef, which was public property, but he could not tapu other people’s palms; and the expedient adopted was interesting.  He tapu’d his own trees, and his example was imitated over all Hatiheu and Anaho.  I fear Taipi might have tapu’d all that he possessed and found none to follow him.  So much for the esteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief is held by others; a single circumstance will show what he thinks of it himself.  I never met one, but he took an early opportunity to explain his situation.  True, he was only an appointed chief when I beheld him; but somewhere else, perhaps upon some other isle, he was a chieftain by descent:  upon which ground, he asked me (so to say it) to excuse his mushroom honours.

It will be observed with surprise that both these tapus are for thoroughly sensible ends.  With surprise, I say, because the nature of that institution is much misunderstood in Europe.  It is taken usually in the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition, such as that which to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking, or yesterday prevented any one in Scotland from taking a walk on Sunday.  The error is no less natural than it is unjust.  The Polynesians have not been trained in the bracing, practical thought of ancient Rome; with them the idea of law has not been disengaged from that of morals or propriety; so that tapu has to cover the whole field, and implies indifferently that an act is criminal, immoral, against sound public policy, unbecoming or (as we say) ‘not in good form.’  Many tapus were in consequence absurd enough, such as those which deleted words out of the language, and particularly those which related to women.  Tapu encircled women upon all hands.  Many things were forbidden to men; to women we may say that few were permitted.  They must not sit on the paepae; they must not go up to it by the stair; they must not eat pork; they must not approach a boat; they must not cook at a fire which any male had kindled.