_6. The death taboo._--This was made by pouring some oil into a small
calabash, and burying it near the tree. The spot was marked by a
little hillock of white sand. The sight of one of these places was
also effectual in scaring away a thief.

7. _The rat taboo._--This was a small cocoa-nut leaf basket, filled
with ashes from the cooking-house, and two or three small stones, and
suspended from the tree. It signified a wish that rats might eat holes
in the fine mats of the thief, and destroy any cloth, or other
property which he might value.

8. _The thunder taboo._--If a man wished that lightning might strike
any who should steal from his land, he would plait some cocoa-nut
leaflets in the form of a small square mat, and suspend it from a
tree, with the addition of some white streamers of native cloth
flying. A thief believed that if he trespassed he, or some of his
children, might be struck with lightning, or, perhaps his own trees
struck and blasted from the same cause. They were not, however, in the
habit of talking about the effects of _lightning_. It was the
_thunder_ they thought did the mischief; hence they called that to
which I have just referred, the _thunder_ taboo.

From these few illustrations it will be observed that Samoa formed no
exception to the remarkably widespread system of superstitious taboo;
and the extent to which it preserved honesty and order among a heathen
people will be readily imagined. At the present day the belief in the
power of these rude hieroglyphics is not yet eradicated. In passing
along you still see something with streamers flying, dangling from a
tree in one place, a basket suspended in another, and some reeds erect
in a third. The sickness, too, and dying hours of some hardened thief