76 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



force a perpetration of this barbarous rite. The old cannibal, 

 however, lingered on, and the Calliope was forced to leave. Sir 

 Everard would never permit a cannibal to touch his quarter- 

 deck, and refused to give a passage to one of Cacobau's sons 

 till he had been positively assured that- the lad had never 

 tasted human flesh. 



The climate necessitates speedy interment, and early on the 

 morning following the death of a chief his grave is dug. Two 

 sextons, seated opposite each other, make three feints with 

 their bamboo digging-sticks, and then commence business. 

 The grave is seldom more than three feet deep, and mats are 

 laid in it, in which the body or, as frequently happened, the 

 bodies are wrapped. The sextons having performed their 

 ablutions and purifications, return to partake of the funeral 

 baked meats, supplied in the most extravagant profusion. 

 Articles that were prized by the deceased are frequently buried 

 with him, so that it often happens that a poor Jcaisi (or com- 

 moner) who in life could not obtain one mat, would be buried 

 with four or six. Funeral reform, it may be noticed, is required 

 as much in Fiji as at home. In some parts of the group I 

 noticed a sort of mausoleum erected over the grave of a native 

 chief. These resemble cairns more than anything else, and are 

 very carefully made they stand about six feet high, the gables 

 being filled in with sinnet (a strong rope made from fibre of the 

 husk of the cocoa-nut) wrought into different-sized squares and 

 arranged diagonally. 



To enable my readers fully to understand the change that 

 has come over Fiji, I give Mr. Williams's account of the death 

 and funeral of the Tui Cakau, king or prince of Somo-Somo, in 

 Taviuni, of which he was an unwilling witness, and in glorious 

 contrast, that of the funeral of his son, who was buried with 

 all the rites of the Catholic Church, in the same place, thirty- 



