I must now take some little notice of the other great institution, the _tapu_. The limits of these flying sketches of the good old times will not allow of more than a partial notice of the all-pervading _tapu_. Earth, air, fire, water, goods and chattels, growing crops, men, women, and children,--everything absolutely was subject to its influence, and a more perplexing puzzle to new pakehas who were continually from ignorance infringing some of its rules, could not be well imagined. The natives, however, made considerable allowance for this ignorance, as well they might, seeing that they themselves, though from infancy to old age enveloped in a cloud of _tapu_, would sometimes fall into similar scrapes. The original object of the ordinary _tapu_ seems to have been the preservation of property. Of this nature in a great degree was the ordinary personal _tapu_. This form of the _tapu_ was permanent, and consisted in a certain sacred character which attached to the person of a chief and never left him. It was his birthright, a part in fact of himself, of which he could not be divested, and which was well understood and recognized at all times as a matter of course. The fighting men and petty chiefs, and every one indeed who could by any means claim the title of _rangatira_--which in the sense I now use it means gentleman--were all in some degree more or less possessed of this mysterious quality. It extended or was communicated to all their moveable property, especially to their clothes, weapons, ornaments, and tools, and to everything in fact which they touched. This prevented their chattels from being stolen or mislaid, or spoiled by children, or used or handled in any way by others. And as in the old times, as I have before stated, every kind of property of this kind was precious in consequence of the great labour and time necessarily, for want of iron tools, expended in the manufacture, this form of the _tapu_ was of great real service. An infringement of it subjected the offender to various dreadful imaginary punishments, of which deadly sickness was one, as well as to the operation of the law of _muru_ already mentioned. If the transgression was involuntary, the chief, or a priest, or _tohunga_, could, by a certain mystical ceremony, prevent or remit the doleful and mysterious part of the punishment if he chose, but the civil action, or the robbery by law of _muru_, would most likely have to take its course, though possibly in a mitigated form, according to the circumstances.