[1] Quoted by Melville in Typee, Chapter XXV. The chronicle of de
Figeroas’s voyage—the voyage by which the Marquesas were discovered and
the Polynesians looked upon for the first time by European man—was
published in Madrid, according to Melville, in 1613. Mendaña’s voyage
was made in 1595.
[2] By Ivor H. N. Evans, M.A., Cambridge University Press, 1923.
[3] Written kapu in Hawaiian and taboo by the mariners who came first
amongst the Polynesians. I have been instructed to write the word tapu.
Its meaning is not merely “forbidden”: it means “sacred,” “inviolate,”
“belonging to the gods.” In the four stories in the present collection
where tapu is in operation I have made no attempt to explain its
significance; I have merely said that it was forbidden to go to that
place or go near that person.
[4] Published by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian
Ethnology and Natural History, 1923.