Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/227

1769 herbaceous plants as yield mild juices devoid of all acridity, similar to the English chickweed, groundsel, etc.; with these they make fomentations, which they frequently apply to the wound, taking care to cleanse it as often as possible; the patient all the time observing great abstinence. By this method, if they have told me truly, their wounds are cured in a very short time. As for their medicines we learned but little concerning them; they told us, and indeed freely, that such and such plants were good for such and such distempers, but it required a much better knowledge of the language than we were able to obtain during our short stay to understand the method of application.

Their manner of disposing of their dead as well as the ceremonies relating to their mourning are so remarkable that they deserve a very particular description. As soon as any one is dead the house is immediately filled with his relations, who bewail their loss with loud lamentations, especially those who are the farthest removed in blood from, or who profess the least grief for, the deceased. The nearer relations and those who are really affected spend their time in more silent sorrow, while the rest join in a chorus of grief at certain intervals, between which they laugh, talk, and gossip as if totally unconcerned. This lasts till daylight of the next day, when the body, being shrouded in cloth, is laid upon a kind of bier on which it can conveniently be carried on men's shoulders. The priest's office now begins; he prays over the body, repeating his sentences, and orders it to be carried down to the sea-side. Here his prayers are renewed; the corpse is brought down near the water's edge, and he sprinkles water towards but not upon it; it is then removed forty or fifty yards from the sea, and soon after brought back. This ceremony is repeated several times. In the meantime a house has been built and a small space of ground round it railed in; in the centre of this house are posts, upon which the bier, as soon as the ceremonies are finished, is set. On these the corpse is to remain and putrefy in state, to the no small disgust of every one whose business requires him to pass near it.