Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/396

330 530 TRANSACTIONS AT lunity to relate it. Among Finow's followers, there was a certain chief, a native of Fiji, who about that period fell ill and died : his wife, who was also a native of Fiji, in accordance with the religious notions in which she had been brought up, considered it a breach of duty to outlive him ; she therefore desired to be strangled. All her Tonga friends endea- voured to dissuade her from what appeared to them so unnecessary and useless an act ; but nol she was determined, she said, to fulfil her duty, in defect of which she should never be happy in her mind, — the hotooas of Fiji would punish her; and thus, by living, she should only incur fresh miseries. Her friends, finding all remonstrances in vain, allowed her to do as she pleased: she accordingly laid herself down on the ground, by the side of her deceased hus- "band, with her face upwards ; and desiring a couple of Fiji men to perform their duty, they put a band of gnatoo round her neck, and pull- jng at each end, soon ended her existence *. In the evening they were buried together in the same grave, in a sitting posture, according to the Fiji custom. Mr. Mariner happened not to be present when she was strangled, but chief, Tooitonga, died, to strangle his chief wife 5 but this absurd practice was left off during Mv. Mariner's time.
 * It used to be the custom at Tonga, when the divine