i;2 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS CH. vn 



for their prayers by the surviving relations. During the 

 ceremony emblematical devices are made use of; a young 

 plantain tree signifies the deceased, and a bundle of feathers 

 the deity invoked. Opposite to this the priest places 

 himself, often attended by relations of the deceased, and 

 always furnished with a small offering of some kind of 

 eatables intended for the god. He begins by addressing 

 the god by a set form of sentences, and during the time he 

 repeats them employs himself in weaving cocoanut leaves 

 into different forms, all which he disposes upon the grave 

 where the bones have been deposited ; the deity is then 

 addressed by a shrill screech, used only on that occasion, 

 and the offering presented to his representative (the little 

 tuft of feathers), which after this is removed, and everything 

 else left in statu quo, to the no small emolument of the rats, 

 who quietly devour the offering. 



Keligion has been in all ages, and is still in all countries, 

 clothed in mysteries inexplicable to human understanding. 

 In the South Sea Islands it has still another disadvantage 

 to any one who desires to investigate it : the language in 

 which it is conveyed, or at least many words of it, is 

 different from that of common conversation ; so that although 

 Tupia often showed the greatest desire to instruct us in it, 

 he found it almost impossible. It is only necessary to 

 remember how difficult it would be to reconcile the apparent 

 inconsistencies of our own religion to the faith of an infidel, 

 and to recollect how many excellent discourses are daily 

 read to instruct even us in the faith which we profess, to 

 excuse me when I declare that I know less of the religion of 

 these people than of any other part of their policy. What 

 I do know, however, I shall here write down, hoping that 

 inconsistencies may not appear to the eye of the candid 

 reader as absurdities. 



This universe and its marvellous parts must strike the 

 most stupid with a desire of knowing from whence they 

 themselves and it were produced ; their priests, however, 

 have not ideas sufficiently enlarged to adopt that of creation. 

 That this world should have been originally created from 



