Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/468

402 402 TRANSACTIONS AT tions of the deceased chief, togetlier with those who formed his household, and also the women who were tabooed by having touched his dead body, whilst oiling and preparing it, went to the back of the island (without any particular order or ceremony) to procure a number of flat peb- bles, principally white, but a few black, for which they made baskets on the spot to carry them in as before mentioned, when they went to procure sand. With these they returned to the grave, and strewed the inside of the house with the white ones, and also the outside about the fytoca, as a decoration to it: the black pebbles they strewed only upon those white ones, which covered the ground directly over the body, to about the length and breadth of a man, in the form of a very eccentric ellip- sis. After this, the house over the, fytoca was closed up at both ends with a reed fencing, reaching from the eaves to the ground, and, at the front and back, with a sort of basket-work, made of the young branches of the cocoa-nut tree, split and interwoven in a very curious and ornamental way, to remain till the next burial, when they are to be taken down, and, after the conclusion of the ceremony, new ones are to be put up in like manner. A large quantity of provisions vas now sent to the maldi by the chiefs of the different districts of the island,