Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/209

Rh the entrails. This he accepted only too eagerly. The priest in refusing him at first would throw back his hair and scratch his head and say "It's tahboo" himself only being able to take off the tahboo, which he finally did, after gormandizing his fill.

As to the cause of this stinginess of food, Mr. Holden says that to a small community like those on Tobey, the coming of eleven men, who had already been nearly starved, made quite a draught, and they were themselves nearly always more or less short of victuals. Tropical abundance was not realized under their manner of cultivation. Abundance of food, like the most of blessings, is a product of civilization. They also seemed to have many strange superstitions, and the priests, who managed the tahboo mysteries, required their living from the people.

It was perhaps owing to the scarcity of some articles of food, or some superstitious awakening among the people, that a rising of a part of the people against the white men began. It led to acts that can not be recalled without a shudder, to think that even savages should perpetrate such deliberate cruelty, or that white men should suffer it. Mr. Holden's account only occasions the surmise how many sailors have perished, as the most of his comrades did, in the South Seas, but with the hope that that phase of trade and commerce in the world has passed away.

On a certain day, along before noon, the family of his master, of which he was now considered one, were all together in the house, when suddenly there was heard a fearful yelling from some distance down the shore. The master raised a whoop and started out of the house, followed at once by the wife and four children. Holden did