her a wasting or a deadly sickness. A slow disease follows
on the eating of tapu fish, and can only be cured with the bones of the
same fish burned with the due mysteries. The cocoa-nut and breadfruit
tapu works more swiftly. Suppose you have eaten tapu fruit at the
evening meal, at night your sleep will be uneasy; in the morning,
swelling and a dark discoloration will have attacked your neck, whence
they spread upward to the face; and in two days, unless the cure be
interjected, you must die. This cure is prepared from the rubbed leaves
of the tree from which the patient stole; so that he cannot be saved
without confessing to the Tahuku the person whom he wronged. In the
experience of my informant, almost no tapu had been put in use, except
the two described: he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature and
operation of the others; and, as the art of making them was jealously
guarded amongst the old men, he believed the mystery would soon die out.
I should add that he was no Marquesan, but a Chinaman, a resident in the
group from boyhood, and a reverent believer in the spells which he
described. White men, amongst whom Ah Fu included himself, were exempt;
but he had a tale of a Tahitian woman, who had come to the Marquesas,
eaten tapu fish, and, although uninformed of her offence and danger, had
been afflicted and cured exactly like a native.

Doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly and fanciful
race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong
indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a
depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea
of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness
and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack
his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor
whose rights he has invaded. "Had you hidden a tapu?" we may conceive
him asking: and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and that
is perhaps the strangest feature of the system--that it should be
regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when
examined from within, should present so many apparent evidences of
design.

We read in Dr. Campbell's "Poenamo" of a New Zealand girl, who was
foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantly
sickened, and died in the two days of simple terror. The period is the
same as in the Marquesas; doubtless t