ommitted by them or their tribe.

And here I must retract the word guilty, which I see I have written
inadvertently; for--according to the morals and principles of the
people of whom he was one, and of the time to which he belonged, and
the training he had received--so far from being guilty, he did a
praiseworthy, glorious, and public-spirited action when he opened the
jugular vein of a bound captive and sucked huge draughts of his blood.

To say the truth, he was a very nice old man, and I liked him very
much. It would not, however, be advisable to put him in a passion; not
much good would be likely to arise from it: as, indeed, I could show by
one or two very striking instances which came under my notice; though,
to say the truth, he was not easily put out of temper. He had one great
moral rule,--it was, indeed, his rule of life: he held that every man
had a right to do everything and anything he chose, provided he was
able and willing to stand the consequences; though he thought some men
fools for trying to do things which they could not carry out
pleasantly, and which ended in getting them baked.

I once hinted to him that, should every one reduce these principles to
practice, he himself might find it awkward; particularly as he had so
many mortal enemies. To which he replied, with a look which seemed to
pity my ignorance, that every one _did_ practise this rule to the best
of their abilities, but that some were not so able as others; and that
as for his enemies, he should take care they never surprised _him_: a
surprise being, indeed, the only thing he seemed to have any fear at
all of. In truth, he had occasion to look out sharp. He never was known
to sleep more than three or four nights in the same place, and often,
when there were ill omens, he would not sleep in a house at all, or two
nights following in one place, for a month together. I never saw him
without both spear and tomahawk, and ready to defend himself at a
second's notice: a state of preparation perfectly necessary, for though
in his own country and surrounded by his tribe, his death would have
been such a triumph for hundreds, not of distant enemies, but of people
within a day's journey, that none could tell at what moment some stout
young fellow in search of _utu_ and a "_ingoa toa_" (a warlike
reputation) might rush upon him, determined to have his head or leave
his own.

The old buck himself had, indeed, performed several exploits of this
nat