told by one they were like so much mist, and as the traveller
walked into them dispersed and dissipated; another described them
as being shaped like men and having eyes like cats; from none could
I obtain the smallest clearness as to what they did, or wherefore
they were dreaded. We may be sure at least they represent the
dead; for the dead, in the minds of the islanders, are all-
pervasive. 'When a native says that he is a man,' writes Dr.
Codrington, 'he means that he is a man and not a ghost; not that he
is a man and not a beast. The intelligent agents of this world are
to his mind the men who are alive, and the ghosts the men who are
dead.' Dr. Codrington speaks of Melanesia; from what I have
learned his words are equally true of the Polynesian. And yet
more. Among cannibal Polynesians a dreadful suspicion rests
generally on the dead; and the Marquesans, the greatest cannibals
of all, are scarce likely to be free from similar beliefs. I
hazard the guess that the Vehinehae are the hungry spirits of the
dead, continuing their life's business of the cannibal ambuscade,
and lying everywhere unseen, and eager to devour the living.
Another superstition I picked up through the troubled medium of
Tari Coffin's English. The dead, he told me, came and danced by
night around the paepae of their former family; the family were
thereupon overcome by some emotion (but whether of pious sorrow or
of fear I could not gather), and must 'make a feast,' of which
fish, pig, and popoi were indispensable ingredients. So far this
is clear enough. But here Tari went on to instance the new house
of Toma and the house-warming feast which was just then in
preparation as instances in point. Dare we indeed string them
together, and add the case of the deserted ruin, as though the dead
continually besieged the paepaes of the living: were kept at
arm's-length, even from the first foundation, only by propitiatory