If one man was angry traced to human causes. with another, he went at night and buried certain leaves close by his house, that the person, in coming out in the morning, might step over them, and be taken ill. If a person felt poorly, he thought he must have stepped over some of those leaves buried by an enemy. He sent for native doctors, who administered juices from the bush, and searched for the mischievous leaves. They got pigs for their fees. If the patient died, it was supposed that the leaves had not been found out. Great wailing at death. Scratched their faces till they streamed with blood. Bodies of the dead buried. When a dead. body was laid in the grave a pig was taken to the place and its head chopped off and thrown into the grave to be buried with the body. This was supposed to prevent disease spreading to other members of the family. With the dead were buried cups, pillows, and other things used by the deceased, and even the sticks with which the grave was dug. On the top of the grave they kindled a fire to enable the soul of the departed to rise to the sun. If this was not done the soul went to the lower wretched regions of Pakasia, The aged were buried alive, and at their own request. It was even considered a disgrace to the family of an aged chief if he was not buried alive. When an old man felt sick and infirm, and thought he was dying, he deliberately told his children and friends to get all ready and bury him. They yielded to his wishes, dug a round deep pit, wound a number of fine mats round his body, and lowered down the poor old man into his grave in a sitting posture. Live pigs were then brought, and tied, each with a separate cord, the one end of the cord to the pig, and the other end to the arm of the old man. The cords were cut in the middle, leaving the one half hanging at the arm of the old man, and off the pigs were taken to be killed and baked for the burial feast; the old man, however, was supposed still to take the pigs with him to the world of spirits. The greater the chief the more numerous the pigs, and the more numerous the pigs the better the reception in their hades of heathenism. The poor old man thus wound up, furnished with his pig strings, and covered over with some more mats, was all ready. His grave was then filled up, and his dying groans drowned amid the weeping and the wailing of the living. The revolting custom of burying alive was not confined to infants and the aged. If a person in sickness showed signs of delirium, his grave was dug, and he was buried forthwith, to prevent the disease spreading to other members of the family. I was told of a young man in the prime of life who was thus buried. He burst up the grave and escaped. He was caught, and forced into the grave again. A second time he struggled to the surface; and then they led him to the bush, lashed him fast to a tree, and left him there to die. They have a curious mode of punishing a thief in some parts of this group. They lash together a number of unhusked cocoa-nuts, put the culprit on the top of the pile, and then set him adrift on the open sea. A heap of cocoa-nuts such as this was seen one morning off the village of Erakor, and when a canoe went out to see what it was they found a young woman on the top of them. They took her on shore, and she became one of the wives of Sualo. A story is told at Vate of a man who was standing on a projecting rock out at the reef, and amusing himself by whistling on his bamboo fife. A large fish came and swallowed him up, fife and all. He split up the bamboo flute, made a knife of it, and commenced cutting the inside of the monster. died, floated ashore, and the man got out alive. 21. THE LOYALTY ISLANDS. It These are uplifted coral formations, covered with pine trees in some places, and a little to the east of New Caledonia. The highest is under 300 feet above the level of the sea. When I first visited the group, in 1845, a chronic state of war prevailed, and each island was divided into two parties. There had been a recent fight on Lifu, in which forty had been killed on the one side, and seventy on the other. Kidnapping from one another was common. These and others who fell in battle were dressed for the oven. They were inveterate cannibals. Laulaati was said to be principal god, who made a stone, out of which came the first man and woman. The people resembled the Fijians, seemed healthy and industrious, and built large round houses fifty feet in diameter. Each island had a separate dialect, with words ending in consonants, as in the Papuan. They preserved relics.of the dead, such as fingernails, teeth, and tufts of hair. These seemed to be their principal idols. The priests, when they prayed, tied on to their foreheads, or to their arms above the elbow, a small bag containing such relics of their forefathers similar to Nos. 1 and 2. On opening No. 2 I found it contained two finger-nails an inch long each, some smaller pieces, a leaf, a feather, a bit of coloured cotten rag, and a tuft of hair. Polygamy prevailed. One chief we met with who had forty wives, but it was more common to have only three or four. The dead were buried, and the spirit supposed to go westward to a place called Locha. In sickness they sent for native doctors, whose principal remedies were herbs and salt water. The rule was, "no cure, no pay." At Uea the cure for headache was to let out the pain at the crown of the head by the following horrid surgery :-The scalp was slit up and folded over, and the cranial bone scraped with a fine edged shell till the dura-mater was reached. A very little blood was allowed to escape. In some cases the scraped aperture was |