124 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
with death. Those among the middle or higher 
ranks who practised polygamy, allowed their wives 
other husbands. It is reported that brothers, or 
members of the same family, sometimes exchanged 
their wives, while the wife of every individual was 
also the wife of his taio or friend. 
Their character in this respect presents a most 
unnatural mixture of brutal degradation with 
infuriated and 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, un¬ 
authorized by the husband, even a word or a look, 
from a stranger, if the husband was suspicious, or 
attributed 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 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 
dwelling, 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 com- 
