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216 of angering the chief is present and effective, but the ultimate sanction is the power of the tindalo. If a common man were to take upon himself to tambu anything he might, people would think that he would not do it unless he knew that he had the power to do it; they would watch, and if any one who violated his tambu were to fall sick, he would be recognized at once as one who had a powerful tindalo, and he would rise. Each tindalo has his special leaf, and a man will set his tambu with the leaf of his tindalo as a mark; men do not always know whose leaf it is, but they know that they have to deal with a tindalo, not only with a man, if they disregard the mark. The tambu is too convenient an institution to drop when the original sanction of it has ceased to operate; a native Christian teacher therefore does not hesitate, as a man of position in society, to set a tambu; thieves he says are afraid of a man if not of a tindalo. In the Banks' Islands there is a minor prohibition, soloi, as well as the more solemn tapu, in which probably there is no direct reference to a super-natural sanction. But a man by virtue of the supernatural mana which accrues to him through his association with a spirit will va-tapu, separate from common use, a path, trees, part of the sea-beach, a canoe, a fishing-net, and no one would be surprised if sickness fell at once upon any one who should break the tapu. A person of no particular distinction would set his soloi before the trees or garden, the fruit and produce of which he wished to reserve for some feast, and intruders would know at any rate that he carried his bow and arrows. Stronger than any individual sanction was that of the secret societies called Tamate; each had its leaf, and any member of one could set the leaf of his society as a mark, to disregard which would stir the anger of all the members. The payment of a pig or money would appease the individual or society whose prohibition had been despised.

It is evident that a tambu approaches to,a curse, when it is a prohibition resting on the invocation of an unseen power. Thus at Saa, a few years ago, the chief forbade the young people of the place to go to school, with a curse by the name