28 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



In the morning, early, he again went out on the sea in his canoe to fish, 

 and having caught a quantity paddled back to the shore ; there he waited 

 a long time for the woman (or wife), Houmea, to come down to fetch the 

 fish he had caught, but finding she did not come, he went on to the village; 

 and, entering, said to her, " 0, mother, mother ! am I to remain ever on 

 the sands ? there was I waiting for thee, and thou didst not appear ; nor, 

 indeed, hast thou done any thing at all!" {i.e., towards preparing for my 

 return). Then Houmea arose, and went forth, and when she got to the 

 canoe, she swallowed all the fish ! But, on her going thither, her husband 

 had sent their tAvo children to watch her, and when they got there (within 

 sight but hidden), they saw her swallowing the fish. So those children 

 retiu-ned running to their father, and said to him, *' sir, sir ! it was 

 verily Houmea herself who swallowed the caught fish of thy canoe ! " 

 Shortly after this Houmea returned to the village, panting and blowing, 

 and said to her husband, " Never a single scrap was there left in thy canoe 

 of all the fish thou didst catch ! All have been taken away by some man or 

 other." Then her husband replied, " lady-daughter ! who, indeed, is 

 that man thou speakest of? The children were verily there, and on their 

 looking-out they saw thee — thy own very self — swallowing the fishes of my 

 canoe." On hearing this she was overwhelmed with shame; nevertheless 

 she strove hard at her own proper work, winding about, doubhng and 

 equivocating, that her theft of fish-stealing might be wholly concealed. In 

 addition thereto she also loudly said, that she was guiltless of this charge, 

 for she had never known anything whatever of crime, whether of adultery 

 or of stealing the food of any man ; (therefore, was she likely to begin 

 now ?) And then she also said to herself, within her heart, concerning her 

 children, " All right and straight, no doubt, your doings, but I'll equal 

 them yet !" 



On another morning, after this, the father went again out to sea in his 

 canoe to fish, and when his canoe had got out to the fishing-ground and had 

 anchored there, Houmea said to one of her children, " child, go for some 

 water for us, we are all very thirsty; " and so the child went. Then she 

 called to the other of her children, saying, " child, come hither to me, 

 that the lice (of thy head) may be caught and killed."* So this child went 

 to her, and squatted down by her, and she caught some lice, and then 

 she swallowed the child whole down into her stomach ! Just afterwards 

 the other child returned with the water, and this one was also swallowed 

 up by her. Verily the two children were thus destroyed by her, swallowed 



* The head of a chief's child being rigidly tapu (tabooed, or sacred), could only be 

 touched by a tapu person, and so with its vermin ; through which the poor children were 

 often great sufferers. 



