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Popular Science Monthly - Oct, Nov, Dec, 1915 — Volume 86 by Anonymous
page 32 of 485 (06%)
servants to the chiefs.

But the process of god-making did not end with the appearance
of men, for great chiefs and warriors after death became kalou
yalo, or spirits, and often remained upon earth a menace to the
unwary who might offend them. Curiously, these deified mortals
might suffer a second death which would result in their utter
annihilation, and while in Fiji we heard a tale of an old chief
who had met with the ghost of his dead enemy and had killed him
for the second and last time; the club which served in this
miraculous victory having been hung up in the Mbure as an
object of veneration.

Of a still lower order were the ghosts of common men or of
animals, and most dreaded of all was the vengeful spirit of the
man who had been devoured. The ghosts of savage Fiji appear all
to have been malevolent and fearful beings, whereas those of
the more cultured Polynesians were some of them benevolent. As
Ellis says of the Tahitian mythology:

Each lovely island was made a sort of fairyland and the spells
of enchantment were thrown over its varied scenes. The
sentiment of the poet that

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep"

was one familiar to their minds, and it is impossible not to
feel interested in a people who were accustomed to consider
themselves surrounded by invisible intelligences, anti who
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