the late war many fell in the bush; their bodies, sometimes
headless, were brought back by native pastors and interred; but
this (I know not why) was insufficient, and the spirit still
lingered on the theatre of death. When peace returned a singular
scene was enacted in many places, and chiefly round the high gorges
of Lotoanuu, where the struggle was long centred and the loss had
been severe. Kinswomen of the dead came carrying a mat or sheet
and guided by survivors of the fight. The place of death was
earnestly sought out; the sheet was spread upon the ground; and the
women, moved with pious anxiety, sat about and watched it. If any
living thing alighted it was twice brushed away; upon the third
coming it was known to be the spirit of the dead, was folded in,
carried home and buried beside the body; and the aitu rested. The
rite was practised beyond doubt in simple piety; the repose of the
soul was its object: its motive, reverent affection. The present
king disowns indeed all knowledge of a dangerous aitu; he declares
the souls of the unburied were only wanderers in limbo, lacking an
entrance to the proper country of the dead, unhappy, nowise
hurtful. And this severely classic opinion doubtless represents
the views of the enlightened. But the flight of my Lafaele marks
the grosser terrors of the ignorant.

This belief in the exorcising efficacy of funeral rites perhaps
explains a fact, otherwise amazing, that no Polynesian seems at all
to share our European horror of human bones and mummies. Of the
first they made their cherished ornaments; they preserved them in
houses or in mortuary caves; and the watchers of royal sepulchres
dwelt with their children among the bones of generations. The
mummy, even in the making, was as little feared. In the Marquesas,
on the extreme coast, it was made by the household with continual