lO Hntton Webster 



not allowed to trim their beards. Subsequently there was a 

 tabooed period kept for five years. Elsewhere in the South 

 Seas less extensive periods prevailed, the longest known being at 

 Huahine, one of the Society Islands, where a season of abstinence 

 is said to have lasted for ten or twelve years. ^ 



The observance of such taboos varied according as they were 

 common or strict. Whilst a common season prevailed, the men 

 were required only to abstain from their usual duties and to 

 attend at the Jiciau or temple where prayers were offered every 

 morning and evening. At a period strictly tabooed the regula- 

 tions were of a sterner character and in consequence a general 

 gloom and silence pervaded the whole district or island. Every 

 fire and light was extinguished ; canoes were not launched ;* no 

 person bathed ; no one was to be seen out of doors save those 

 whose presence was required at the temple. Even the lower crea- 

 tion felt the rigor of the law : " no dog must bark, no pig must 

 grunt, no cock must crow, — or the tabu would be broken, and 

 fail to accomplish the object designed. On these occasions they 

 tied up the mouths of the dogs and pigs, and put the fowls under 

 a calabash, or fastened a piece of cloth over their eyes."^ 



^ Ellis, Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii or Owhyhec, London, 1826, 

 p. 366; idem, Polynesian Researches, iv. 387 sq.; J. J. Jarves, History of 

 the Hazvaiian or Sandzuich Islands, Boston, 1843, p. 57. 



* Death was the punishment for being found in a canoe on a tabooed 

 day (H. T. Cheever, Island World of the Pacific, New York, 1856, p. 87). 



''Ellis, Narrative, 366 sq., idem, Polynesian Researches, iv. 388. Almost 

 precisely the same regulations characterized the Sabbath observances 

 introduced by the Christian missionaries among their Polynesian adher- 

 ents. The Hawaiians, in fact, called the Sabbath la tabn or '' sacred day " 

 (Ellis, Narrative, 368). No food was cooked on that day, it being all 

 prepared on the previous Saturday, no fires were kindled, no canoes were 

 paddled. The natives neither fished nor tilled the soil, and if on a journey, 

 they stopped over the Sabbath (H. T. Cheever, Life in the Sandvuich 

 Islands, New York, 1856, p. 295 ; Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Tzvenfy- 

 one Years in the Sandwich Islands, Hartford, 1849, pp. 177 sq.). In 

 Tahiti, also, the Sabbath rest was rigidly maintained. On that day no 

 canoes were launched and no person was seen abroad except on the way 

 to church or when returning from divine service. " The success of the 

 missionaries in introducing this strict observance of a Sabbath is as- 



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