74 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 

 CHAPTER X. 



FUNERALS IN TAVIUNI. 



MANY of the native superstitions curiously resemble some 

 weaknesses of our own people. For instance, the howling of a 

 dog at night is generally believed to betoken death ; a cat 

 purring around a man's feet, notwithstanding that it is fre- 

 quently repulsed, gives rise to the same grim fear. Rats 

 scratching around the grave of a woman are supposed to indi- 

 cate that she had lived an unchaste life. I have heard some- 

 thing similar to this in portions of Southern Italy. The large 

 shooting-stars were said to be gods, and the little ones the 

 departing souls of humankind. Many people imagine that a 

 great storm often accompanies the death of a great personage, 

 and they instance the hurricane throughout Europe on the 3rd 

 September, 1658, the day on which the soul of Oliver Cromwell 

 went to his account, or the tempest which swept over St. 

 Helena while the Head of the Grand Army was dying. The 

 same thought is met with in Fiji, and Mr. Williams assures us 

 that on one occasion being off the coast of Vanua Lev'u, he 

 heard a single loud report like a clap of thunder, though the 

 sky was cloudless. The natives told him that it was the noise 

 of a spirit ; they were near the place where the spirits plunged 

 into the other world, and that a great chief had just died. 



In the days before the bulk of the natives became Christians, 

 there was no such thing as affection or care for the aged and 

 infirm ; and as the idea prevailed that in the future world a 

 person's condition would be almost exactly that in which he 

 died, the old used often to request their children to strangle 

 them before they reached total infirmity or second childhood 



