in them.
He might certainly light a little fire in his own house, not for
cooking, as that never by any chance could be done in his house, but for
warmth; but that, or any other fire, if he should have blown upon it
with his breath in lighting it, became at once _tapu_, and could be used
for no common or culinary purpose. Even to light a pipe at it would
subject any inferior person, or 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
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
on a journey, and 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_, or 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."[108]

[107] _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori, p. 94.

[108] _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori, p. 98.

The head of a chief was always and at all times deemed most sacred, and
in consequence he might not even touch it with his own hand; if he
chanced to commit the sacrilege, he was obliged at once to apply his
fingers to his sacred nose and to snuff up the odour of sanctity which
they had abstracted, thus restoring the holy effluvium to the place from
which it had been taken.[109] For the same reason the cutting of a
chief's hair was a most difficult and delicate operation. While it
lasted neither the great man himself nor the barber who operated on him
was allowed to do anything or partake of any food except under the
restrictions imposed on all sacred or tabooed persons; to use the
scissors or the shell, with which the operation was performed, for any
other purpose or any other person would have been a terrible profanation
of sacred things, and would have rendered the rash sacrilegious wretch,
who had dared so to appropriate it, liable to the severest punishment.
The severed hair was collected and buried or hung up on a tree,[110]
probably to put it out of the way of common folk, who might have been
struck dead by contact with the holy locks. But apparently the dangers
incident to hair-cutting were by no means confi