Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/84

 22 FUNERAL RITES. Some years after writing the foregoing the writer came upon the following passage in Ellis’s "Polynesian Researches." Describing similar customs of the inhabitants of Tahiti, he says "The bodies of the dead, among the chiefs, were, however, in general preserved above ground: a temporary house or shed was erected for them, and they were placed on a kind of bier. The practice of embalming appears to have been long familiar to them; and the length of time which the body was thus preserved depended upon the care with which the process was performed.. . . . The intestines, brain, &c., were removed, all moisture extracted from the body, which was fixed in a sitting posture during the day, and exposed to the sun. The inside was filled with cloth saturated with perfumed oils, which were carefully rubbed over the outside every day. In the course of a few weeks the muscles dried up, and the whole body appeared as if covered with a kind of parchment. It was then clothed and fixed in a sitting posture; a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of food, fruit, and flowers daily presented by the relatives, or the priest appointed to attend the body. In this state it was preserved many months; and when it decayed, the skull was carefully kept by the family, while the other bones, &c., were burned within the precincts of the family temple."