Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/228

170 These houses of corruption, tu papow, are of a size proportionate to the rank of the person contained in them. If he is poor it merely covers the bier, and generally has no railing round it. The largest I ever saw was eleven yards in length. These houses are ornamented according to the ability and inclination of the surviving relations, who never fail to lay a profusion of good cloth about the body, and often almost cover the outside of the house; the two ends, which are open, are also hung with garlands of the fruits of the palm-nut (Pandanus), cocoanut leaves knotted by the priests, mystic roots, and a plant called by them ethee nota marai (Terminalia), which is particularly consecrated to funerals. Near the house is also laid fish, fruits, and cocoanuts, or common water, or such provisions as can well be spared; not that they suppose the dead in any way capable of eating this provision, but they think that if any of their gods should descend upon that place, and being hungry find that these preparations had been neglected, he would infallibly satisfy his appetite with the flesh of the corpse.

No sooner is the corpse fixed up within the house, or ewhatta, as they call it, than the ceremony of mourning begins again. The women (for the men seem to think lamentations beneath their dignity) assemble, led on by the nearest relative, who, walking up to the door of the house, swimming almost in tears, strikes a shark's tooth several times into the crown of her head; the blood which results from these wounds is carefully caught in their linen, and thrown under the bier. Her example is imitated by the rest of the women; and this ceremony is repeated at intervals of two or three days, as long as the women are willing or able to keep it up; the nearest relation thinking it her duty to continue it longer than any one else. Besides this blood—which they believe to be an acceptable present to the deceased, whose soul they believe to exist, and hover about the place where the body lays, observing the action of the survivors—they throw in cloths wet with tears, of which all that are shed are carefully preserved for that purpose; and