538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Often when Tanoa returned to Mbau from his murderous raids children 

 yet alive were to be seen suspended by an ankle or wrist from the yard- 

 arm of this canoe, and so common was this practise that such were 

 called in derision Mianu-manu-ni-latha (birds of the sail). 



The later years of this inhuman monster were disturbed by dissen- 

 tions and by the rebellions of his sons. Yet when he came to die he 

 smiled with his last breath when told that five of his wives were to be 

 strangled to accompany him into the world beyond. 



Throughout his reign, Eewa and Mbau were almost constantly at 

 war, but every now and then Tanoa would command the Eewa chiefs to 

 come to Mbau to beg pardon for their temerity, which they always did, 

 even if victorious. 



Tanoa lived to be nearly if not quite eighty years of age, a rare oc- 

 currence in Fiji, for they believed that as they were at the time of death 

 so would they be in the world to come. Thus doubly did they dread the 

 infirmities of age, and people who passed middle life commonly re- 

 quested their nearest relative and friends to strangle or bury them alive. 

 Thus died the great chief Tuithakau (king of the reefs) of Somo somo, 

 an event of which the missionary Williams gives a detailed and graphic 

 description. Tuithakau was described by Commodore Wilkes as 

 a fine specimen of a Fiji Islander; bearing no slight resemblance to our ideas 

 of an old Eoman. His figure was particularly tall and manly and he had a head 

 fit for a monarch. He looks as if he were totally distinct from the scenes 

 of horror that are daily taking place around him, and his whole countenance has 

 the air and expression of benevolence. 



In August, 1845, this old aristocrat became feeble after prolonged 

 illness, and one day he announced to those around him that the time of 

 his death had come. Two of his wives were then adorned in gala attire 

 and strangled by their kindred, while the old king was covered with 

 charcoal pigment, the chieftain's turban of masi placed upon his head, 

 and a string of whale's teeth around his neck. Then the chief priest 

 blew two blasts upon his triton shell, and after an interval turning to 

 the old king's son he said " True the sun of one king has set, but our 

 king yet lives." Then the aged man was carried out through an open- 

 ing torn through the wall of the house, as is the custom to-day at Fijian 

 funerals, and they placed him upon the bodies of his two dead wives 

 who lay upon the mats within the grave, and as the earth was thrown 

 over him he was heard to cough beneath the ground. Sixty of his sub- 

 jects then cut off their little fingers, fastened them upon reeds and 

 thrust them into the thatch along the eaves of the dead chief's house. 

 So respected was this custom of burying the aged that for a whole 

 year at Somo Somo the missionlaries heard of but one natural death of 

 an adult, and Wilkes says that among over 200 natives at Savu Savu he 

 saw not one over forty years of age. 



{To he continued) 



