gun. Of course there are many examples of people blowing others from
cannon; but that is quite a different thing; any blockhead can do that.
But the _exit_ of Tiki Whenua has a smack of originality about it which
I like, and so I have mentioned it here.

But all this is digression on digression: however, I suppose the reader
is getting used to it, and I cannot help it. Besides, I wanted to show
them how poor Tiki "took arms against a sea of troubles," and for the
want of a "bare bodkin" made shift with a carronade. I shall never
cease to lament those nice lads who met with that little accident (poor
fellows!) on Motiti. A fine, strapping, stalwart set of fellows, who
believed in force. We don't see many such men now-a-days. The present
generation of Maori are a stunted, tobacco-smoking, grog-drinking,
psalm-singing, special-pleading, shilling-hunting set of wretches: not
above one in a dozen of them would know how to cut up a man _secundum
artem_. 'Pshaw! I am ashamed of them.

I am getting tired of this _tapu_, so will give only one or two more
instances of the local temporary _tapu_. In the autumn, when the great
crop of _kumera_ was gathered, all the paths leading to the village and
cultivated lands were made _tapu_, and any one coming along them would
have notice of this by finding a rope stretched across the road about
breast-high; when he saw this, his business must be very urgent indeed
or he would go back: indeed, it would have been taken as a very serious
affront, even in a near relation, supposing his ordinary residence was
not in the village, to disregard the hint given by the rope,--that for
the present there was "no thoroughfare."

Now, the reason of this blockade of the roads was this. The report of
an unusually fine crop of _kumera_ had often cost its cultivators and
the whole tribe their lives. The news would spread about that Ngati
so-and-so, living at so-and-so, had housed so many thousands of baskets
of _kumera_. Exaggeration would multiply the truth by ten, the fertile
land would be coveted, and very probably its owners, or rather its
_holders_, would have to fight both for it and for their lives before
the year was out. For this reason strangers were not welcome at the
Maori harvest home. The _kumera_ were dug hurriedly by the whole
strength of the working hands, thrown in scattered heaps, and concealed
from the casual observation of strangers by being covered over with the
leaves of the plants: w