sistence: fishing-nets, canoes, pigs, provisions--all went. His
canoe upset, and he and all his family narrowly escaped drowning--some
were, perhaps, drowned. He was immediately robbed, and well pummelled
with a club into the bargain, if he was not good at the science of
self-defence--the club part of the ceremony being always fairly
administered one against one, and after fair warning given to defend
himself. He might be clearing some land for potatoes, burning off the
fern, and the fire spreads farther than he intended, and gets into a
_wahi tapu_ or burial-ground. No matter whether any one has been buried
in it or no for the last hundred years: he is tremendously robbed. In
fact, for ten thousand different causes a man might be robbed; and I
can really imagine a case in which a man for scratching his own head
might be legally robbed.

Now as the enforcers of this law were also the parties who received the
damages, as well as the judges of the amount--which in many cases (such
as that of the burnt child) would be everything they could by any means
lay hands on--it is easy to perceive that under such a system, personal
property was an evanescent sort of thing altogether. These executions
or distraints were never resisted. Indeed in many cases (as I shall
explain by-and-by), it would have been felt as a slight, and even an
insult, _not_ to be robbed; the sacking of a man's establishment being
often taken as a high compliment, especially if his head was broken
into the bargain: and to resist the execution would not only have been
looked upon as mean and disgraceful in the highest degree, _but it
would have debarred the contemptible individual from the privilege of
robbing his neighbours_; which was the compensating expedient I have
alluded to. All this may seem a waste of words to my pakeha Maori
readers, to whom these things have become such matters of course as to
be no longer remarkable; but I have remembered that there are so many
new people in the country who don't understand the beauty of being
knocked down and robbed, that I shall say a few more words on the
subject.

The tract of country inhabited by a single tribe might be, say, from
forty to a hundred miles square, and the different villages of the
different sections of the tribe would be scattered over this area at
different distances from each other. We will by way of illustrating the
working of the _muru_ system, take the case of the burnt child. Soon
afte