to salo; as is also the laying of the corpse in a shallow cave under a projecting rock. There was, however, and still remains, a custom in some places of keeping the body unburied and putrefying in the house as a mark of affection. At Gaua, in Santa Maria, it was the women's business to watch the corpse, laid on a mat over cross sticks between two slow fires in the house for ten days or more, till nothing but skin and bones was left; during which time they drank the drippings of the corpse. The same was done in former days at Mota. The description of the funeral of a man of rank at Motlav will hold good generally of any of the Banks' Islands. The corpse of a great man was brought out into the open space in the middle of the village, loosely wrapped in a mat, with his malosaru dress of ceremony on, his som ta Rowa necklace round his neck, his forehead smeared, il, with red earth, mea, his armlets, and bracelets of pig's tusks reversed, but no bow at his hand, on his breast a cycas leaf, no mele, the mark of his rank in the Suqe, and the leaves of the crotons, sasa, belonging to his Tamate societies. By his side were heaped bunches of cocoa-nuts tied together, and plenty of old dry cocoa-nuts, yams of various kinds, caladium, and all kinds of food, with a bunch of the leaves of a particular dracæna stuck upon the heap, the karia garame tamate, the ghost's tongue dracæna, all of which were afterwards heaped upon the grave. Then a man ready of speech made an address to the ghost, telling him, when they asked him in Panoi whether he were a great man, to say what was heaped beside him. The orator would not spare his faults[1]; if he were a man of bad character he would say to him, 'Poor ghost! will you be able to enter Panoi? I think not.' Then the burial took place. Upon the grave was set a bamboo vessel of water with a cocoa-nutshell cup, and a little dish with a roasted yam in it; as the food was eaten by rats they renewed it, for the rat might be the deceased himself, at any rate during the five days that the ghost remained about the place. At Gaua they hang up pigs
- ↑ 'I myself heard Parut at Mota abuse I Mala, because he had died without having completed his suqe for him.'—Rev. J. Palmer.
