chief’s house; no one would venture to touch it. To try them, a friend of mine gave a fig of tobacco to a slave; who, after having used it, was informed that it had been on the roof of the chief’s house. The poor fellow, in the greatest consternation, went immediately to the chief telling him what had happened, and beseeching him to take off the _tapu_ from the tobacco to prevent the evil consequences.”[22.1] [Sidenote: Taboo as a preserver of property.] Hence it has been truly said that “this form of _tapu_ was a great preserver of property. The most valuable articles might, in ordinary circumstances, be left to its protection, in the absence of the owners, for any length of time.”[22.2] If any one wished to preserve his crop, his house, his garments, or anything else, he had only to taboo the property, and it was safe. To shew that the thing was tabooed, he put a mark {23} to it. Thus, if he wished to use a particular tree in the forest to make a canoe, he tied a wisp of grass to the trunk; if he desired to appropriate a patch of bulrush in a swamp, he stuck up a pole in it with a bunch of grass at the top; if he left his house with all its valuables, to take care of itself, he secured the door with a bit of flax, and the place straightway became inviolable, nobody would meddle with it.[23.1] Hence although the restrictions imposed by taboo were often vexatious and absurd, and the whole system has sometimes been denounced by Europeans as a degrading superstition, yet observers who looked a little deeper have rightly perceived that its enactments, enforced mainly by imaginary but still powerful sanctions, were often beneficial. “The New Zealanders,” says one writer, “could not have been governed without some code of laws analogous to the _tapu_. Warriors submitted to the supposed decrees of the gods who would have spurned with contempt the orders of men, and it was better the people should be ruled by superstition than by brute force.”[23.2] Again, an experienced missionary, who knew the Maoris well, writes that “the _tapu_ in many instances was beneficial; considering the state of society, absence of law, and fierce character of the people, it formed no bad substitute for a dictatorial form of government, and made the nearest approach to an organized state of society.”[23.3]