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- I did so the horrified girls re-doubled their shrieks. Their wild cries
and frightened motions actually alarmed me, and throwing down the tappa,
I was about to rush from the house, when in the same instant their
clamours ceased, and one of them, seizing me by the arm, pointed to the
broken fibres that had just fallen from my grasp, and screamed in my
ears the fatal word Taboo!
I subsequently found out that the fabric they were engaged in making was
of a peculiar kind, destined to be worn on the heads of the females, and
through every stage of its manufacture was guarded by a rigorous taboo,
which interdicted the whole masculine gender from even so much as
touching it.
Frequently in walking through the groves I observed bread-fruit and
cocoanut trees, with a wreath of leaves twined in a peculiar fashion
about their trunks. This was the mark of the taboo. The trees
themselves, their fruit, and even the shadows they cast upon the ground,
were consecrated by its presence. In the same way a pipe, which the king
had bestowed upon me, was rendered sacred in the eyes of the natives,
none of whom could I ever prevail upon to smoke from it. The bowl was
encircled by a woven band of grass, somewhat resembling those Turks’
heads occasionally worked in the handles of our whip-stalks.
A similar badge was once braided about my wrist by the royal hand
of Mehevi himself, who, as soon as he had concluded the operation,
pronounced me ‘Taboo’. This occurred shortly after Toby’s disappearance;
and, were it not that from the first moment I had entered the valley
the natives had treated me with uniform kindness, I should have supposed
that their conduct afterwards was to be ascribed to the fact that I had
received this sacred investiture.
The capricious operations of the taboo are not its least remarkable
feature: to enumerate them all would be impossible. Black hogs--infants
to a certain age--women in an interesting situation--young men while the
operation of tattooing their faces is going on--and certain parts of the
valley during the continuance of a shower--are alike fenced about by the
operation of the taboo.
I witnessed a striking instance of its effects in the bay of Tior,
my visit to which place has been alluded to in a former part of this
narrative. On that occasion our worthy captain formed one of the party.
He was a most insatiable sportsman. Outward bound, and off the pitch of
Cape Horn, he used to sit on the taffrail, and keep the steward loading
three or four old fowling pieces, with which he would bring down
albatrosses, Cape pigeons, jays, petrels, and divers other marine fowl,
who followed chattering in our wake. The sailors were struck aghast at
his impiety, and one and all attributed our forty days’ beating about
that horrid headland to his sacrilegious slaughter of these inoffensive
birds.
At Tior he evinced the same disregard for the religious prejudices of
the islanders, as he had previously shown for the superstitions of the
sailors. Having heard that there were a considerable number of fowls in
the valley the progeny of some cocks and hens accidentally left there by
an English vessel, and which, being strictly tabooed, flew about almost
in a wild state--he determined to break through all restraints, and
be the death of them. Accordingly, he provided himself with a most
formidable looking gun, and announced his landing on the beach by
shooting down a noble cock that was crowing what proved to be his own
funeral dirge, on the limb of an adjoining tree. ‘Taboo’, shrieked the
affrighted savages. ‘Oh, hang your taboo,’ says the nautical sportsman;
‘talk taboo to the marines’; and bang went the piece again, and down
came another victim. At this the natives ran scampering through the
groves, horror-struck at the enormity of the act.
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