But if they considered themselves too weak to avenge the wrong they
were justified to call on their neighbours to assist them, or to make
an appeal to the governor or even to the king who, however, rarely
inflicted a severer punishment than banishment. The crime of theft
was repressed by the retaliatory measure of allowing the person robbed



HAWAIIANS. 247

to undertake a pillaging expedition against the offender who was not
permitted to resist ; otherwise the whole district would have made
common cause with the injured party, and would have enforced the
act of retributive justice. In some islands, when a robbery was
committed against a high chief, the criminal was bound hand and foot,
and being placed in an old decayed canoe, he was towed out to sea
and turned adrift. Rebellion or stealing an article of value belonging
to the king was considered a capital crime. The offender was either
killed by a blow with a club or a stone, or he was fastened to a tree,
and by stretching a rope tightly round his neck he was strangled.
