I subsequently found out that the fabric they were engaged in making was
of a peculiar kind, destined to be worn on the heads of females; and
through every stage of its manufacture was guarded by a rigorous taboo,
which interdicted the whole masculine gender from even so much as
touching it.

Frequently in walking through the groves, I observed bread-fruit and
cocoanut trees with a wreath of leaves twined in a peculiar fashion
about their trunks. This was the mark of the taboo. The trees
themselves, their fruit, and even the shadows they cast upon the ground,
were consecrated by its presence. In the same way a pipe which the King
had bestowed upon me was rendered sacred in the eyes of the natives,
none of whom could I ever prevail upon to smoke from it. The bowl was
encircled by a woven band of grass, somewhat resembling those Turks'
heads occasionally worked in the handles of our whip-stalks. A similar
badge was once braided about my wrist by the royal hand of Mehevi
himself, who, as soon as he had concluded the operation, pronounced me
"Taboo." This occurred shortly after Toby's disappearance; and were it
not that from the first moment I had entered the valley the natives had
treated me with uniform kindness, I should have supposed that their
conduct afterwards was to be ascribed to the fact that I had received
this sacred investiture.

--HERMAN MELVILLE.

[Footnote: The author, Herman Melville, was born in New York in 1819. In
his youth he ran away from home and became a sailor on a whaling vessel.
Escaping from the cruel tyranny of the captain, he reached the Marquesas
Islands, where he had strange adventures as the captive of a tribe of