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Updated: May 19, 2025
In Borobodo, in the jungle of Java, I had seen, as near Cairo, the proudest trophy, temple, and tomb of king and priest humbled in the dust by the changing soul of man in his fight to throw off the shackles of the past. This marae had not been a place of cannibalism, as the Paepae Tapu of the Marquesas Islands. The Tahitians had no record of ever having eaten humans.
Presently the huge trunk of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins of an ancient fort; and our guide, halting and holding forth his arm, announced that we had reached the paepae tapu.
Campbell's Poenamo of a New Zealand girl, who was foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantly sickened, and died in the two days of simple terror. The period is the same as in the Marquesas; doubtless the symptoms were so too.
Whether the Old Men recoiled from an interview with Queen Victoria's son, whether Muller had secretly intervened, or whether the step flowed naturally from the fears of the king and the nearness of the feast, the tapu was early that morning re-enforced; not a day too soon, from the manner the boats began to arrive thickly, and the town was filled with the big rowdy vassals of Karaiti.
They placed the remains of their kindred in the forks of the trees, and hid the sacred tiki for ever from mortal eyes. Then they departed, and the ægis of a holy place invests for posterity Te Puke Tapu. "It is a charnel-house if you like, under those trees there, but a very beautiful one as is evident. We ought to keep alive the memories that make the place romantic.
None of the Ngapuhi knew how it had got there, and to their superstitious minds it seemed to have come by supernatural means. And this thing was tapu in the most deadly degree. "The mighty and terrible Hongi trembled and shrieked when he saw the unlooked-for wonder. He and his men turned and ran out of the amphitheatre of the bay as fast as they could, shouting, 'Te tapu! te tapu!
Not only my house, but my neighbourhood as well, was left in peace; even on our walks abroad we were guarded and prepared for; and, like great persons visiting a hospital, saw only the fair side. For the matter of a week we were thus suffered to go out and in and live in a fool's paradise, supposing the king to have kept his word, the tapu to be revived and the island once more sober.
The woman was rich, and would not miss a trifling sum, five or ten piasters a month for the mutoi. But why was it forbidden for her son to live with Jeanette, being not married to her? That was our law, but it was seldom enforced. The mutois were fat men who carried war-clubs and struck the poor with them, but her son was tapu because of Jeanette's money. She was at ease now, she said.
Regler asked a native to accompany him upon a voyage; the man went gladly enough, but suddenly perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat, leaped back with a scream; nor could the promise of a dollar prevail upon him to advance. The Marquesan, it will be observed, adheres to the old idea of the local circumscription of beliefs and duties.
He was in a terrible stew when this pig, killed on tapu ground, and consequently tapu itself, stranded on his beach. His wife and he came out with long poles and pushed it into the water. Then they got into their boat, and managed to get the pig out into the channel and set it floating off again. Afterwards they carefully burnt the poles that had touched the dreadful thing.
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