The penalties for infringement of tapu depended upon the particular phase of it that was broken. Often instant death was dealt out to offenders; it was inevitable in all important cases. But slighter punishment was sufficient in instances of a less comprehensive kind. Tapu was rarely broken except through accident or ignorance, for dark and gloomy horrors of a spectral kind hovered round it in Maori imagination. Yet if tapu was infringed, neither ignorance of it, nor unavoidable accident was held to be the slightest excuse. Bloody massacres have taken place, and furious wars been waged, simply to avenge some unintentional breach of tapu. No notion of chastity seems to have belonged to Maori women. They were children of nature, and by no means prudish. Whilst young and free, unengaged to any gentleman, a Maori girl was permitted to have as many followers as she liked, and she was not exactly what we should term virtuous. If pretty she was a general pet in the kainga, and a merry time she had of it. One of the ordinary rules of hospitality as practised in a Maori village, still not entirely obsolete in some places, proves the engaging openness of manners and unrestricted freedom which prevailed socially. The number of half-breed children occasionally seen about a kainga, show the easy way in which certain Pakeha have fallen in with Maori customs. But tapu provided a marriage law of singular stringency. So soon as a girl was married, nay, merely betrothed, no more license for her. She was tapu to her husband, and if the terrors of the unseen world should not be enough to keep her in the straight path, death was the penalty for the slightest deviation therefrom. She was the slave as well as the wife of her lord, and this continued until, and sometimes even after, his death, unless he should permit a sort of formal divorce. The person of an ariki was highly tapu. The sublime essence rested, if anywhere, most particularly in his head. His hair might not be cut or dressed without the observance of most formal etiquette. It was a fearful breach of tapu to pass anything over or above his head. Any man was tapu, or unclean, if he were wounded, sick, or undergoing the moku. He might not enter a house, or eat food with his hands. But an ariki in this condition was, of course, tapu in much higher degree. One such dignitary, entering the canoe of another person, accidentally scratched his toe with a splinter. Blood flowing from the wound made the boat tapu, and it thereby became the property of the chief. The owner surrendered at once, not even dreaming of complaint.