Page:Some Account of New Zealand.pdf/49

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There are modes of punishment among them in criminal cases; but I apprehend, in most instances, it is summary, and no way depending upon a cool and dispassionate investigation of the circumstances of delinquency, but rather the result of an hasty and partial decision of the passions.

A case in point occurred a short time previously to my visiting the Bay of Islands: a native, named Awkeeterree, had been some time absent from the tribe to which he belonged, and upon his return discovered that his wife had been unfaithful to him: he immediately went in quest of her paramour; he found him on the beach, and going behind him, armed with an European cutlass, he nearly severed his head from his body. It does not appear that he offered any violence to the wife upon this occasion, but, content with removing the immediate cause of his dishonour, he discarded his wife, and took another to replace her. So far from being censured for this act of outrage, he was, on the contrary, applauded