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 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 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.