478 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TEAYEL 



two plantain stems to serve as rollers. Stranger still, 

 and altogether incrediljle, were it not vouched for by 

 independent testimony of the most satisfactory char- 

 acter, these people scrupled not to offer themselves 

 to a horrible death to satisfy the demands of custom, 

 or to avoid the finger of scorn. So firm was their 

 belief in a future state, in which the actual condition 

 of the dying person was perpetuated, that, on the 

 first symptoms of old age and weakness, parents, with 

 their own free consent, were buried by their children. 

 A missionary was actually invited by a young man 

 to attend the funeral of his mother, who herself 

 walked cheerfully to the grave and was there buried. 

 In Erskine's Journal it is related that a young man 

 who was ill and not able to eat was voluntarily buried 

 alive, because, as he himself said, if he could not 

 eat he should get thin and weak, and the girls would 

 call him a skeleton, and laugh at him. He was buried 

 by his own father; and when he asked to be strangled 

 first he w^as scolded and told to be quiet, and be buried 

 like other people, and give them no more trouble ; and 

 he was buried accordingly. 



The weapons of the Fijians consist of spears, slings, 

 clubs, short throwing-clubs, and bows and arrows. Most 

 of these are larger and heavier than those of other 

 Pacific islanders, corresponding to the more warlike 

 character and greater strength of the people. Their 

 towns are often fortified with one or more earthen 

 ramparts faced with stones, and surmounted by a fence 

 of bamboo or coco-nut trunks, the whole surrounded by a 

 deep moat. The houses of the coast people are oblong, 

 20 to 30 feet long, well built, and wdth doorways 

 on the two sides 4 feet wide, and only about the same 

 height, but rich men and cliiefs have nnich larger houses. 



