FUNERALS IN TA VI UNI. 75 



a behest which the younger were not slow in obeying. In 

 fact, they did not always wait for it. 



Of kindness to the sick no trace existed. In one part of the 

 group they used to visit a famous tree when a person lay 

 dangerously ill if a branch had newly fallen, the patient 

 would die; if a branch had been broken off, the patient's 

 recovery w r as to be looked for. A troublesome patient used 

 sometimes to be clubbed or even buried alive. 



This summary way of saving doctors' bills was not, however, 

 applied to chiefs, or men of position. When the hour of death 

 approached, a chief would call his family together and instruct 

 them as to what he wished to be done his equivalent for our 

 ' last will and testament.' A good deal of implacable revenge 

 on his enemies was inculcated on these occasions, which the 

 rising generation of cannibals used carefully to bear in mind. 



Once dead, a chief's departure was announced by wailing and 

 by the firing of muskets. The principal people of his province 

 would then come to pay their respects, some of them bringing 

 presents for a feast, or as offerings to the memory of the de- 

 parted. The wailings at these ceremonials were (and are to 

 this day) something of the Irish wake order. One of the 

 choruses asks : ' Why did you die ? Were you weary of us ?' 

 The body is then laid out, washed, and oiled. In the old days 

 the ceremony of loloku, commenced after the laying-out, which, 

 in plain English, means that certain of the dead chief's relatives, 

 wives, and attendants, were strangled that they might bear him 

 company in the other world. 



When Tanoa, the aged father of ex-King Cacobau, died, five 

 of his wives were strangled, notwithstanding the protests of 

 Sir Everard Home, who was then in the group in command of 

 H.M.S. Calliope, and who lingered about the islands three 

 months waiting for the old man's death, in order to prevent by 



