THE ISLAND OF NIAS AND ITS PEOPLE. 241 



death in the form of a spider, seeking lodgment in the ancestral 

 image, as has been already described. 



The Niha conceptions of the condition after death are con- 

 fused. The beclioe go below into the city of the dead, where 

 they have to die nine times, or, according to some, as many times 

 as the man has lived years on the earth, and are supposed to lead 

 lives like the earthly lives. They take with them their earthly 

 utensils and possessions in the form of shadows, and can not ex- 

 pect to attain a higher state of wealth than they did on the 

 earth ; therefore living men accumulate as much wealth as pos- 

 sible, in order that they may take the shadow of it with them. 

 The bechoe of wicked men return to the corpse in the grave, 

 and are crushed by the earth. Men who have no male issue are 

 turned after their manifold deaths into night-moths ; those who 

 are murdered, into locusts. The bechoe of murdered men and 

 suicides are assigned separate abodes from the other bechoe. At 

 last, it is said, the earth will die, or sink into the sea, and there will 

 be a new earth. Then the bechoe of the cats will let the bechoe of 

 the men go over the gulf into the new earth, the edge of a sword 

 serving as a bridge. Any one who, in life, has causelessly tor- 

 mented or killed a cat, will be thrown by them into the abyss. 

 Therefore every person is afraid to go near cats to annoy them. 

 Only those also who have had issue can go over, while others be- 

 come butterflies or something of the kind. The bechoe of chil- 

 dren are carried over by their mothers, and go to God. 



After Lowalangi, with whom men have little to do except to 

 make an occasional offering, the most important of the divinities 

 is Latoere. He tried to make men from the tora-fruit, and, not 

 succeeding, called upon Lowalangi to help him, and received the 

 creatures as a gift of swine. Hence he is called Latoere of the 

 thousand swine. He occasionally eats a man — that is, his shadow 

 — as one would slaughter and eat a pig, when the fact is mani- 

 fested by the illness of the victim. In this case an offering is 

 made to induce him to choose another, fatter man, from a dif- 

 ferent part of the country. If this petition fails, the man will 

 have to die. There are other demons, who feed upon the shadows 

 of men, stalking like hunters through the land, using the rain- 

 bow for their net, and assisted by air-dogs, whose heads are 

 turned round so as to look backward, and which are occasionally 

 heard to bark. It is possible, however, by means of special offer- 

 ings, to make one's self unfailingly sound, unless Lowalangi has 

 decreed that there shall be an end of the person in question. 

 The shadows that fall victims to these divine appetites are spe- 

 cial shadows, and not those which are cast in the sun. 



The people also imagine underground ghosts, or bechoe, 

 which live in caves or holes, and trouble men or eat their 



VOL. XXSIII. — 16 



