484 SURGERY. MODES OF BURIAL. 



taken out the pig's brains, put them in the man's head, and 

 covered them up."* 



The nostrils of the female infants were often pressed or 

 spread out during infancy, because they looked on a flat nose 

 as a mark of beauty. Tn the same way the boys sometimes 

 had their forehead and the back of their head pressed upwards, 

 so that the upper part of the skull appeared in the shape of a 

 wedge. This was supposed to make them look more formi- 

 dable in war.-f- 



The dead were not buried at once, but were placed on a 

 platform raised several feet above the ground, and neatly 

 railed in with bamboo. The body was covered with a cloth, 

 and sheltered by a roof. By the side were deposited the 

 weapons of the deceased, and a supply of food and water. 

 When the body had entirely decayed, the bones were collected, 

 carefully cleaned and buried, according to the rank of the 

 deceased, either within or without a "morai/'J The largest 

 morai seen by Captain Cook was the one prepared for Oamo 

 and Oberea, who were the then reigning sovereigns. This was 

 indeed the " principal piece of architecture in the island. It 

 was a pile of stonework, raised pyramidically, upon an oblong 

 base, or square, two hundred and sixty-seven feet long, and 

 eighty -seven wide. It was built like the small pyramidal 

 mounts upon which we sometimes fix the pillar of a sun-dial, 

 where each side is a flight of steps ; the steps, however, at the 

 sides, were broader than those at the ends, so that it terminated 

 not in a square of the same figure with the base, but in a ridge, 

 like the roof of a house : there were eleven of these steps, each 

 of which was four feet high, so that the height of the pile was 

 forty-four feet ; each step was formed of one course of white 



* Ellis, 1. c. vol. ii. p. 277. + In some cases the head is not 



t 1. c. vol. i. p. 343. buried with the other bones, but is 



deposited in a kind of box. 



