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POLYNESIAN RESBAECHES, 
malignant jealousy; for while their conduct with respect 
to the taio, &c. exhibits an insensibility to every feeling 
essential to conjugal happiness, the least familiarity with 
the wife, unauthorized by the husband, even a word or a 
look, from a stranger, if the husband was suspicious, or 
attributes it to improper motives, was followed by instant 
and deadly revenge. 
There is a man now residing in Huahine, whose face 
and shoulders are frightfully marked with deep scars, 
inflicted by blows with a carpenter’s axe, on this account. 
A husband and a wife were once sitting together when 
another man joined the party, and sat down with them. 
He wore a taupoo or bonnet of platted cocoa-nut leaves; 
lifting his hand, and taking hold of it by the part that 
shaded his brows, he waved his hand towards the inland 
part of the district, in removing his bonnet from his head. 
The suspicious husband, observing the motion of his 
hand, considered it as an assignation, that the stranger 
was to meet his wife there ; and without a word, I believe, 
being spoken by either party, he rose up, took down his 
spear, which was suspended from the inside of his dwell¬ 
ing, and ran the man through the body, accusing him at 
the same time of the crime of which he supposed him 
guilty. Several of the murders of the Europeans, that 
have been committed in the islands of the Pacific, have 
originated in this cause. 
Theft was practised, but less frequently among them¬ 
selves than towards their foreign visitors. They supposed 
it equally criminal, yet they do not in general appear to have 
attached any moral delinquency to the practice, but they 
imagined they were more likely to avoid detection when 
stealing from strangers, than when robbing their own 
countrymen. Stealing was always considered as a crime 
