head; but he would
not, however, appear to notice the circumstance, and would appreciate
the civility of his pakeha friend. I have often drunk in this way in
the old times: asking for a drink of water at a native village, a
native would gravely approach with a calabash, and hold it up before me
ready to pour forth its contents; when I, of course, cocked my hand and
lip in the most knowing manner. If I had laid hold of the calabash and
drunk in the ordinary way, as practised by pakehas, I should have at
once fallen in the estimation of all by-standers, and been set down as
a _tutua_, a nobody, who had no _tapu_ or _mana_ about him--a mere
scrub of a pakeha, whom any one might eat or drink after without the
slightest danger of being poisoned.

These things are all changed now; and though I have often, in the good
old times, been tabooed in the most diabolical and dignified manner,
there are only a few old men left now who, by little unmistakable
signs, I perceive consider it would be very uncivil to act in any way
which would suppose my _tapu_ to have disappeared before the influx of
new-fangled pakeha notions. Indeed I feel myself sometimes as if I had
somehow insensibly become partially civilized. What it will all end in,
I don't know.

This same personal _tapu_ would even hold its own in some cases against
the _muru_; though not in a sufficiently general manner to seriously
affect the operation of that well-enforced law. Its inconveniences
were, on the other hand, many, and the expedients resorted to to avoid
them were sometimes comical enough. I was once going on an excursion
with a number of natives; we had two canoes, and one of them started a
little before the other. I was with the canoe which had been left
behind, and just as we were setting off it was discovered that amongst
twenty stout fellows my companions there was no one who had a back!--as
they expressed it: consequently there was no one to carry our
provisions into the canoe. All the lads, women, and slaves had gone off
in the other canoe,--all those who had backs,--and so there we were
left, a very disconsolate lot of _rangatira_, who could not carry their
own provisions into the canoe, and who at the same time could not go
without them. The provisions consisted of several heavy baskets of
potatoes, some dried sharks, and a large pig baked whole. What was to
be done? We were all brought to a full stop, though in a great hurry to
go on. We were beginnin