[Sidenote: Taboo in the Marquesas Islands.] In other parts of Polynesia the system of taboo with its attendant advantages and disadvantages, its uses and abuses, was practically the same, and everywhere, as in New Zealand, it tightened for good or evil the ties of private property. This indeed was perhaps the most obvious effect of the institution. In the Marquesas Islands, it is said, taboo was invested with a divine character as the expression of the will of the gods revealed to the priests; as such it set bounds to injurious excesses, prevented depredations, and united the people. Especially it converted the tabooed or privileged classes into landed proprietors; the land belonged to them alone and to their heirs; common {24} folk lived by industry and by fishing. Taboo was the bulwark of the landowners; it was that alone which elevated them by a sort of divine right into a position of affluence and luxury above the vulgar; it was that alone which ensured their safety and protected them from the encroachments of their poor and envious neighbours. “Without doubt,” say the writers from whom I borrow these observations, “the first mission of taboo was to establish property, the base of all society.”[24.1] [Sidenote: Superstitious fear as a preserver of property in Samoa.] In Samoa also superstition played a great part in fostering a respect for private property. That it did so, we have the testimony of a missionary, Dr. George Turner, who lived for many years among the Samoans and has given us a very valuable account of their customs. He says: “I hasten to notice the second thing which I have already remarked was an auxiliary towards the maintenance of peace and order in Samoa, viz. _superstitious fear_. If the chief and heads of families, in their court of inquiry into any case of stealing, or other concealed matter, had a difficulty in finding out the culprit, they would make all involved swear that they were innocent. In swearing before the chiefs the suspected parties laid a handful of grass on the stone, or whatever it was, which was supposed to be the representative of the village god, and laying their hand on it, would say, ‘In the presence of our chiefs now assembled, I lay my hand on the stone. If I stole the thing may I speedily die.’ This was a common mode of swearing. The meaning of the grass was a silent additional imprecation that his family might all die, and that _grass_ might grow over their habitation. If all swore, and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs then wound up the affair by committing the case to the village god, and solemnly invoking him to mark out for speedy destruction the guilty {25} mischief-maker. But, instead of appealing to the chiefs, and calling for an oath, many were contented with their own individual schemes and imprecations to frighten thieves and prevent stealing. When a man went to his plantation and saw that some cocoa-nuts, or a bunch of bananas, had been stolen, he would