unfading, and of perpetual sweetness; its inmates enjoyed a beauty which never
waned, and a youth which never waxed old, while passing their days, without
weariness, in dancing, merriment, and festivity. This was the highest idea of
Heaven and future blessedness to which they could attain, and was as
materialistic as that of the Mohammedans.
It was not necessary that a man should live a pure, true, and noble life to gain
admission to the Polynesian paradise, nor was he excluded from it on account of
his sins. In order to pass the departed spirit into elysium, the corpse was dressed
in the best attire the relatives could provide, the head was wreathed with flowers,
and other decorations were added. A pig was then baked whole, and placed on
the deceased’s body, surrounded by a pile of vegetable food. After this,
supposing the departed to have been a son, the father would deliver some such
speech as the following:—“My son, when you were alive I treated you with
kindness, and when you were taken ill I did my best to restore you to health; and
now you are dead, there’s your momoe o, or property of admission. Go, my son,
and with that gain an entrance into the palace of Tiki, and do not come to this
world again to disturb or alarm us.” Body, pig, and food would then be buried;
and, if the kinsman received no contrary intimation within a few days of the
interment, they believed that the offerings had obtained for the departed the
desired admission. But if a cricket were heard on the premises, it was considered
an ill omen, and they would utter the dismalest howls, and such expressions as
the following: “Oh, our brother! his spirit has not entered the Paradise; he is
suffering from hunger, he is shivering with cold!” The grave would immediately
be opened, and the offering repeated,—generally with success.
The sacrifices of the Fijians are of a costlier character. The Fijian chiefs had
from twenty to a hundred wives, according to their rank; and at the interment of
a principal chief, the body was laid in state “upon a spacious lawn,” in the
presence of a great crowd of interested spectators. After the natives had
exercised all the taste and skill at their command in adorning her person, the
principal wife would walk out and take her seat near her husband’s body. A rope
was passed round her neck; eight or ten powerful men pulled at it with all their
strength until she died of suffocation; and the body was then laid by that of the
chief. This done, a second wife seated herself in the same place; the process of
strangulation was repeated, and she, too, died. A third and a fourth became
voluntary sacrifices in the same manner; and all were interred in a common
grave, one above, one below, and one on either side of the husband. The motive
of this barbarous practice was said to be, that the spirit of the chief might not be