Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/309

1770 the South Sea Islands, and only one private one came under my notice, which was in the neighbourhood of a plantation of their sweet potatoes. It was a small square bordered round with stones; in the middle was a spade, and on it hung a basket of fern roots—an offering (I suppose) to the gods for the success of the crops—so, at least, one of the natives explained it. They, however, acknowledged the influence of superior beings. Tupia, however, seemed to be much better versed in legends than any of them, for whenever he began to preach, as we called it, he was sure of a numerous audience, who attended with most profound silence to his doctrines.

The burial of the dead, instead of being a pompous ceremony as in the islands, is here kept secret; we never so much as saw a grave where any one had been interred; nor did they always agree in the accounts they gave of the manner of disposing of dead bodies. In the northern parts they told us that they buried them in the ground; and in the southern, said that they threw them into the sea, having first tied to them a sufficient weight to cause their sinking. However they disposed of the dead, their regret for the loss of them was sufficiently visible; few or none were without scars, and some had them hideously large on their cheeks, arms, legs, etc., from the cuts they had given themselves during their mourning. I have seen several with such wounds of which the blood was not yet stanched, and one only, a woman, while she was cutting herself and lamenting; she wept much, repeating many sentences in a plaintive tone of voice, at every one of which she with a shell cut a gash in some part of her body. She, however, contrived her cuts in such a manner that few of them drew blood, and those that did, penetrated a small depth only. She was old, and had probably outlived those violent impressions that grief, as well as other passions of the mind, make upon young people; her grief also was probably of long standing. The scars upon the bodies of the greater part of these people evinced, however, that they had felt sorrows more severely than she did.