POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
231 
tahutahu employed his influence with the evil spirit^ to 
revenge some insult or injury he or his relatives had 
received; but he more frequently exercised it for hire. 
From his employers he received his fee and his directions, 
and having procured the tubu, or instrument of acting on 
his victim, repaired to his own rude marae, performed 
his diabolical rites, delivered over the individual to the 
demon whom he invoked, imploring the spirit to enter 
into the wretch, and inflict the most dreadful bodily suf¬ 
ferings, terminate at length the mortal existence, and 
then hurry the spirit to the po, or state of night, and 
there pursue the dreadful work of torture. These were 
the infernal labours of the tahutahu or the pifao, the 
wizard or the sorcerer; and these, according to the su¬ 
perstitions of the people, their terrific results. 
It is possible that in some instances these sufferings 
may have been the effects of imagination, and a deep 
impression on the mind of the afflicted individual, that 
he was selected as the victim of some insatiable demon’s 
rage. Imagining he was already delivered to his grasp, 
hope was abandoned, death deemed inevitable, and the 
infatuated sufferer became the victim of despair. It is 
also possible that poison, of which the natives had several 
kinds, vegetable and animal, (some few of which they 
have stated capable of destroying human life,) might have 
produced the violent convulsions that sometimes pre¬ 
ceded dissolution. It is probable that into the piece of 
food, over which the sorcerer performed his incantations, 
he introduced a portion of poison, which would prove 
fatal to the individual by whom it was eaten. Indeed, 
some of the sorcerers, since their conversion to Chris¬ 
tianity, and one of them on his death-bed, confessed that 
this had been practised, and that they supposed the 
