at it would subject
any inferior person (and in many instances an equal) to a terrible
attack of the _tapu morbus_; besides being a slight or affront to the
dignity of the person himself.

I have seen two or three young men when on a journey fairly wearing
themselves out on a wet day and with bad apparatus, trying to make fire
to cook with, by rubbing two sticks together; when at the same time
there was a roaring fire close at hand at which several _rangatira_ and
myself were warming ourselves: but it was _tapu_, sacred fire--one of
the _rangatira_ had made it from his own tinder box, and blown upon it
in lighting it, and as there was not another tinder box amongst us,
fast we must, though hungry as sharks, till common culinary fire could
be obtained. A native whose personal _tapu_ was perhaps of the
strongest, might, when at the house of a pakeha, ask for a drink of
water; and the pakeha, being green, would hand him some water in a
glass, or, in those days, more probably in a tea-cup; the native would
drink the water, and then gravely and quietly break the cup to pieces,
or otherwise he would appropriate it by causing it to vanish under his
mat. The new pakeha would immediately fly into a passion, to the great
astonishment of the native; who considered as a matter of course, that
the cup or glass was, in the estimation of the pakeha, a very worthless
article, or he would not have given it into his hand and allowed him to
put it to his head, the part most strongly infected by the _tapu_. Both
parties would be surprised and displeased; the native wondering what
could have put the pakeha into such a taking, and the pakeha "wondering
at the rascal's impudence, and what he meant by it?"

The proper line of conduct for the pakeha in the above case made and
provided, supposing him to be of a hospitable and obliging disposition,
would be to lay hold of some vessel containing about two gallons of
water (to allow for waste), and hold it up before the native's face;
the native would then stoop down and put his hand, bent into the shape
of a funnel or conductor for the water, to his mouth; then, from the
height of a foot or so, the pakeha would send a cataract of water into
the said funnel, and continue the shower till the native gave a slight
upward nod of the head, which meant "enough:" by which time, from the
awkwardness of the pakeha, the two gallons of water would be about
expended, half, at least, on the top of the native's