oister, and women could rule over a land in which they were
denied the control of their own children.

But the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful
restrictions. We have seen it as the organ of paternal government. It
serves besides to enforce, in the rare case of some one wishing to
enforce them, rights of private property. Thus a man, weary of the
coming and going of Marquesan visitors, tapu's his door; and to this day
you may see the palm-branch signal, even as our great-grandfathers saw
the peeled wand before a Highland inn. Or take another case. Anaho is
known as "the country without popoi." The word popoi serves in different
islands to indicate the main food of the people; thus, in Hawaii, it
implies a preparation of taro; in the Marquesas, of breadfruit. And a
Marquesan does not readily conceive life possible without his favourite
diet. A few years ago a drought killed the breadfruit trees and the
bananas in the district of Anaho; and from this calamity, and the
open-handed customs of the island, a singular state of things arose.
Well-watered Hatiheu had escaped the drought; every householder of Anaho
accordingly crossed the pass, chose some one in Hatiheu, "gave him his
name"--an onerous gift, but one not to be rejected--and from this
improvised relative proceeded to draw his supplies, for all the world as
though he had paid for them. Hence a continued traffic on the road. Some
stalwart fellow, in a loin-cloth, and glistening with sweat, may be seen
at all hours of the day, a stick across his bare shoulders, tripping
nervously under a double burthen of green fruits. And on the far side of
the gap a dozen stone posts on the wayside in the shadow of a grove mark
the breathing-place of the popoi-carriers. A little back from the
breach, and not half a mile from Anaho, I was the more amazed to find a
cluster of well-doing breadfruits heavy with their harvest. "Why do you
not take these?" I asked. "Tapu," said Hoka; and I thought to myself
(after the manner of dull travellers) what children and fools these
people were to toil over the mountain and despoil innocent neighbours
when the staff of life was thus growing at their door. I was the more in
error. In the general destruction these surviving trees were enough only
for the family of the proprietor, and by the simple expedient of
declaring a tapu he enforced his right.

The sanction of the tapu is superstitious; and the punishment of
infraction eit