tale that, on the sight of this dishonoured tabernacle, the
princess prayed she might continue to be numbered with the dead.
But it seems it was too late, her spirit was replaced by the least
dignified of entrances, and her startled family beheld the body
move. The seemingly purgatorial labours, the helpful kindred
spirit, and the horror of the princess at the sight of her tainted
body, are all points to be remarked.

The truth is, the tales are not necessarily consistent in
themselves; and they are further darkened for the stranger by an
ambiguity of language. Ghosts, vampires, spirits, and gods are all
confounded. And yet I seem to perceive that (with exceptions)
those whom we would count gods were less maleficent. Permanent
spirits haunt and do murder in corners of Samoa; but those
legitimate gods of Upolu and Savaii, whose wars and cricketings of
late convulsed society, I did not gather to be dreaded, or not with
a like fear. The spirit of Aana that ate souls is certainly a
fearsome inmate; but the high gods, even of the archipelago, seem
helpful. Mahinui--from whom our convict-catechist had been named--
the spirit of the sea, like a Proteus endowed with endless avatars,
came to the assistance of the shipwrecked and carried them ashore
in the guise of a ray fish. The same divinity bore priests from
isle to isle about the archipelago, and by his aid, within the
century, persons have been seen to fly. The tutelar deity of each
isle is likewise helpful, and by a particular form of wedge-shaped
cloud on the horizon announces the coming of a ship.

To one who conceives of these atolls, so narrow, so barren, so
beset with sea, here would seem a superfluity of ghostly denizens.
And yet there are more. In the various brackish pools and ponds,