An inferior kind of tapu exists, which any one may use. A person who finds a piece of drift timber secures it for himself by tying something round it or giving it a chop with his axe. In a similar way he can appropriate to his own use whatever is naturally common to all. A person may thus stop up a road through his ground, and often leaves his property in exposed places with merely this simple sign to show it is private and generally it is allowed to remain untouched, however many may pass that way; so with a simple bit of flax, the door of a man’s house, containing all his valuables, is left, or his food store; they are thus rendered inviolable, and no one will meddle with them. The owner of a wood abounding with kie-kie, a much prized fruit, is accustomed to set up a pole to preserve it until the fruit be fully ripe; when it is thought to be sufficiently so, he sends a young man to see if the report be favourable. The rahue is then pulled down; this removes the tapu, and the entire population go to trample the wood. All have liberty to gather the fruit, but it is customary to present some of the finest to the chief owner. “When,” says a missionary, “Te Hewhew and nearly sixty of his tribe were overwhelmed by a landslip, in the village of Te Rapa, where they resided, the spot was for a long time kept strictly tapu, and no one was allowed to set foot on it. I was determined to make the effort, and as several who were Christians had lost their lives in the general destruction, I told the natives I should go and read the burial service over them. Viewing me as a tohunga (or priest), they did not dare to offer any opposition. I went on the sacred spot, under which the entire population of a village lay entombed, and there I read the burial service, the neighbouring natives standing on the verge of the ruins and on the surrounding heights.” It is evident therefore that the tapu arises from the will of the chief; that by it he laid a ban upon whatever he felt disposed. It was a great power which could at all times be exercised for his own advantage, and the maintenance of his power, frequently making some trifling circumstance the reason for putting the whole community to great inconvenience, rendering a road to the pa, perhaps the most direct and frequented, or a grove, or a fountain, or anything else tapu by his arbitrary will. Without the tapu he was only a common man, and this is what long deterred many high chiefs from embracing Christianity, lest they should lose this main support of their power. Few but ariki, or great tohungas, claimed the power of the tapu; inferior ones indeed occasionally used it, but the observance of it was chiefly confined to his own retainers, and was often violated with impunity, or by giving a small payment. But he who presumed to violate the tapu of an ariki, did it at the risk of his life and property.