genuine expressions of grief. Those who are in the nearest degree of kindred, and are really affected by the event, are silent; the rest are one moment uttering passionate exclamations in a chorus, and the next laughing and talking without the least appearance of concern. In this manner the remainder of the day on which they assemble is spent, and all the succeeding night. On the next morning the body is shrouded in their cloth, and conveyed to the seaside upon a bier, which the bearers support upon their shoulders, attended by the priest, who having prayed over the body, repeats his sentences during the procession: When it arrives at the water's edge, it is set down upon the beach; the priest renews his prayers, and taking up some of the water in his hands, sprinkles it towards the body, but not upon it. It is then carried back forty or fifty yards, and soon after brought again to the beach, where the prayers and sprinkling are repeated: It is thus removed backwards and forwards several times, and while these ceremonies have been performing, a house has been built, and a small space of ground railed in. In the centre of this house, or Tupapow, posts are set up to support the bier, which is at length conveyed thither, and placed upon it, and here

the

This, to be sure, would be a strange anomaly in the government of God, and utterly irreconcileable with every view we can form of his veracity, if we may use the expression, though still consistent with his wisdom and goodness. But what then shall we say of the conduct of the would-be philosophers, who, with limited faculties and intelligences and benevo lence, (this is no disparagement, for even Voltaire himself, with all his powers, was but a finite creature!) force reason and science to prove what their own feelings belie, and to oppose what their consciences declare to be irresistible? It is not profane, on such an occasion, to accommodate the language of an apostle into a suitable rebuke to such perverse contenders. "What if some labour not to believe, shall their attempts frustrate the work of God? Far be it-God will maintain his truth, though all men should conspire against it." Allowing then free scope to a notion so natural to us, and having our opinions guided by an unerring light, we shall see that there is something vastly more dignified than fashion in the funeral rites of the Otaheitans-and feel that there is something vastly more important than eloquence, in the words of an author already quoted at the commencement of this note :-" Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the infancy of his nature;"-the reason for which is explained by another author, in words still more sublime and exhilarating:-"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."-E.

the body remains to putrify till the flesh is wholly wasted from the bones.

These houses of corruption are of a size proportioned to the rank of the person whose body they are to contain; those allotted to the lower class are just sufficient to cover the bier, and have no railing round them. The largest we ever saw was eleven yards long, and such as these are ornamented according to the abilities and inclination of the surviving kindred, who never fail to lay a profusion of good cloth about the body, and sometimes almost cover the outside of the house. Garlands of the fruit of the palm-nut, or pandanus, and cocoa leaves, twisted by the priests in mysterious knots, with a plant called by them Ethee no Morai, which is particularly consecrated to funeral solemnities, are deposited about the place; provision and water are also left at a little distance, of which, and of other decorations, a more particular description has been given already.

As soon as the body is deposited in the Tupapow, the mourning is renewed. The women assemble, and are led to the door by the nearest relation, who strikes a shark's tooth several times into the crown of her head: The blood copiously follows, and is carefully received upon pieces of linen, which are thrown under the bier. The rest of the women follow this example, and the ceremony is repeated at the interval of two or three days, as long as the zeal and sorrow of the parties hold out. The tears also which are shed upon these occasions, are received upon pieces of cloth, and offered as oblations to the dead: Some of the younger people cut off their hair, and that is thrown under the bier with the other offerings. This custom is founded upon a notion that the soul of the deceased, which they believe to exist in a separate state, is hovering about the place where the body is deposited; that it observes the actions of the survivors, and is gratified by such testimonies of their affection and grief.

Two or three days after these ceremonies have been commenced by the women, during which the men seem to be wholly insensible of their loss, they also begin to perform their part. The nearest relations take it in turn to assume the dress, and perform the office which have already been particularly described in the account of Tubourai Tamaide's having acted as chief mourner to an old woman, his relation, who died while we were in the island. One part of

the

CHAP. IV. SECT. XIX.

the ceremony, however, which accounts for the running away of the people as soon as this procession is in sight, has not been mentioned. The chief mourner carries in his hand a long flat stick, the edge of which is set with shark's teeth, and in a phrenzy, which his grief is supposed to have inspired, he runs at all he sees, and if any of them happen to be overtaken, he strikes them most unmercifully with this indented cudgel, which cannot fail to wound them in a dangerous manner.

These processions continue at certain intervals for five moons, but are less and less frequent, by a gradual diminution, as the end of that time approaches. When it is expired, what remains of the body is taken down from the bier, and the bones having been scraped and washed very clean, are buried, according to the rank of the person, either within or without a morai: If the deceased was an earee, or chief, his skull is not buried with the rest of the bones, but is wrapped up in fine cloth, and put in a kind of box made for that purpose, which is also placed in the morai. This coffer is called exharre no te orometua, the house of a teacher or master. After this the mourning ceases, except some of the women continue to be really afflicted for the loss, and in that case they will sometimes suddenly wound themselves with the shark's tooth wherever they happen to be: This perhaps will account for the passion of grief in which Terapo wounded herself at the fort; some accidental circumstance might forcibly revive the remembrance of a friend or relation whom she had lost, with a pungency of regret and tenderness which forced a vent by tears, and prompted her to a repetition of the funeral rite.

The ceremonies, however, do not cease with the mourning: Prayers are still said by the priest, who is well paid by the surviving relations, and offerings made at the morai. Some of the things, which from time to time are deposited there, are emblematical: A young plantain represents the deceased, and the bunch of feathers the deity who is invoked. The priest places himself over against the symbol of the god, accompanied by some of the rela tions, who are furnished with a small offering, and repeats his oraison in a set form, consisting of separate sentences; at the same time weaving the leaves of the cocoa-nut into different forms, which he afterwards deposits upon the ground where the bones have been interred; the deity is

then

then addressed by a shrill screech, which is used only upon that occasion. When the priest retires, the tuft of feathers is removed, and the provisions left to putrify, or be devoured by the rats.

Of

There is something very remarkable in the circumstance of resemblance among very different and distant people, as to the practice of mourning for the dead, when in fact there can be no such thing as grief in existence, and when the appearance of it is merely a part of what may be called professional duty. It is clear from the accounts of the text and other authorities, that more are concerned in this mourning work at Otaheite, than are really concerned in the occasion of it; and the probability of course is, that in some way or other these additional attendants are recompensed for their doleful services. That the use of mercenary mourners prevailed, and still prevails, among some eastern nations, is clear from Scripture and the relations of recent authors. The reader will find some amusing information concerning them, and an account of the Caoinan or funeral cry of the Irish as practised for similar purposes, in Dr A. Clarke's edition of Mr Harmer's Observations, before alluded to. A quotation from that work can scarcely fail to interest the reader, who will be afterwards favoured with a very curious description of what is said by Lawson to have been practised in North Carolina, in which the general point of resemblance is most strikingly displayed." Not only do the relations and female friends, in Egypt, surround the corpse, while it remains unburied, with the most bitter cries, scratching and beating their faces so violently as to make them bloody, and black, and blue; but, to render the hubbub more complete, and do the more honour to the dead person, whom they seem to imagine to be very fond of noise, those of the lower class of people are wont to call in, on these occasions, certain women, who play on tabors, and whose business it is to sing mournful airs to the sound of this instrument, which they accompany with a thousand distor tions of their limbs, as frightful as those of people possessed by the devil. These women attend the corpse to the grave intermixed with the relations and friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost disorder, like the frantic Bacchanalian women of the ancient heathens, their heads covered with dust, their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed with mud, and howling like mad people." Now let us hear Lawson.-"These savages all agree in their mourning, which is to appear, every night, at the sepulchre, and howl and weep in a very dismal inan ner, having their faces daubed over with light-wood soot, (which is the same as lamp-black) and bears-oil. This renders them as black as it is possible to make themselves, so that their's very much resemble the faces of executed men boiled in tar. If the dead person was a grandee, to carry on the funeral ceremonies, they hire people to cry and lament over the dead man. Of this sort there are several, that practise it for a liveli hood, and are very expert at shedding abundance of tears, and howling like wolves, and so discharging their office with abundance of hypocrisy and art." The reader will meet with a pretty full account of the funeral ceremonies among some of the eastern nations, in Dr Scott's introduction to his recent edition of the Arabian Nights Entertainments.-E.

Of the religion of these people, we were not able to acquire any clear and consistent knowledge: We found it like the religion of most other countries, involved in mystery, and perplexed with apparent inconsistencies. The religious language is also here, as it is in China, different from that which is used in common; so that Tupia, who took great pains to instruct us, having no words to express his meaning which we understood, gave us lectures to very little purpose: What we learnt, however, I will relate with as much perspicuity as I can.

Nothing is more obvious to a rational being, however ignorant or stupid, than that the universe and its various parts, as far as they fall under his notice, were produced by some agent inconceivably more powerful than himself; and nothing is more difficult to be conceived, even by the most sagacious and knowing, than the production of them from nothing, which among us is expressed by the word Creation. It is natural therefore, as no Being apparently capable of producing the universe is to be seen, that he should be supposed to reside in some distant part of it, or to be in his nature invisible, and that he should have originally produced all that now exists in a manner similar to that in which nature is renovated by the succession of one generation to another; but the idea of procreation includes in it that of two persons, and from the conjunction of two persons these people imagine every thing in the universe either originally or derivatively to proceed.

The Supreme Deity, one of these two first beings, they call Taroataihetoomoo, and the other, whom they suppose to have been a rock, Tepapa. A daughter of these was Tettowmatatayo, the year, or thirteen months collectively, which they never name but upon this occasion, and she, by the common father, produced the months, and the months, by conjunction with each other, the days; the stars they suppose partly to be the immediate offspring of the first pair, and partly to have increased among themselves; and they have the same notion with respect to the different species of plants. Among other progeny of Taroataihetoomoo and Tepapa, they suppose an inferior race of deities whom they call Eatuas. Two of these Eatuas, they say, at some remote period of time, inhabited the earth, and were the parents of the first man. When this man, their common ancestor, was born, they say that he

was