674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ger that there beset the passing shade. The eldest of the three be- 

 came at times positively uncanny, for he stopped here and there 

 in the driving rain to execute a sort of weird gamboling dance, 

 whether out of pure excess of spirits or a praiseworthy intention 

 of exorcising the gods of the place I do not know. Little by little 

 I wormed out of them the whole tradition, with fragments of the 

 sagas in which it was preserved. After I got home I set two of 

 my native collectors to write it all down. It is far too long to give 

 here in its entirety, but I will try to condense it. 



Long ago so long ago that the tradition has become dim the 

 ghosts of the dead used to annoy the living. They whistled in 

 the houses, turned the yams rotten in the ground, filled the cook- 

 ing pots with live snakes, or played some other of the pranks in 

 which the Fijian ghost delights. And the living reasoned with 

 themselves, and found that it was because of the bad state of the 

 road to Nakauvadra that the shades could not find their way to 

 the sacred mountain, and so they stayed about their old haunts. 

 So the tribes banded together and built a road for the ghosts of 

 their dead to travel over, and thenceforward they did not stay to 

 annoy the living. 



When a man died, his body was washed and laid in its shroud, 

 and a whale's tooth was put upon his breast to be his stone to 

 throw at the pandanus tree ; and while his friends were still 

 weeping, his spirit left the body and went and stood on the bank 

 of the "Water of the Shades" (Wainiyalo), at the place called 

 Lelele the ferry and cried to Ceba, the ghostly ferryman, who 

 brought the end of his canoe which was of hard vesi if it was for a 

 chief, but the end that was of breadfruit wood for a vulgar shade. 



Across the stream the shade climbed the hill of Nathegani, 

 where grew the pandanus tree. And he threw his whale's tooth 

 at it, and if he hit it he sat down to await the coming of his wife, 

 who, he now knew, was being strangled to his manes ; but if he 

 missed the pandanus tree he went on, weeping aloud, for he knew 

 that his wife had been unfaithful to him in life, and that she 

 cared not to be strangled to accompany him. Then he came to 

 the ghost scatterer, Droydroyalo, who strode toward him and 

 pounded his neck with a great stone, scattering the ndawa fruit 

 he was carrying to eat on his journey. Thence he journeyed to 

 Drekei, where dwell the twin goddesses Nino, who crept on him, 

 peering at him, and gnashing their terrible teeth ; and the shade 

 shrieked in terror and fled away. As he fled up the path he came 

 to a spring and stopped to drink ; and as soon as he tasted the 

 water he ceased weeping, and his friends also ceased weeping in 

 his home, for they straightway forgot their sorrows and were con- 

 soled. Therefore this spring is called the Wai-ni-dula Water of 

 Solace. And when he stood erect from drinking, he looked afar 



