52 MODES OF BURIAL. 



some months before, there was placed a wooden framework in the 

 form of a long box, the materials being obtained from a ship's fittings. 

 Inside it were placed some beads and coloured calico. 



The custom of depositing skulls in cairns on the points of islands, 

 which is prevalent in the eastern portion of the Solomon Group, is 

 not generally practised amongst the islands of Bougainville Straits : 

 and I rarely came upon them in my excursions. However, on an 

 islet in Choiseul Bay, I found two cairns, one of which was tenanted 

 only by hermit-crabs with their cast-off shells, and the other con- 

 tained two skulls that had apparently lain for years in their resting- 

 y)lace to which they were attached by the tendrils of creeping ])lants. 

 On the summit of Oima, I came upon a heap of -stones under which 

 was supposed to be the remains of a Bougainville native killed in a 

 fight, but I failed to find any of his bones after examining the heap. 



The sea is generally chosen as the last resting-place for the 

 natives below the rank of chief in the islands of Bougainville 

 Straits. Lieutenant Malan, whilst encjaojed in sounding at the 

 entrance of the Alu anchorage, passed two large canoes in one of 

 which were being conveyed, for burial in deep water, the remains of 

 a woman who had died during the previous night. The relatives of 

 the deceased accompanied the corpse, but took no share in the 

 paddling, being emploj^ed in wailing and bemoaning their loss after 

 the conventional manner of the Chinese. A peculiar style of 

 paddling was adopted by the funeral party ; each man, pausing after 

 every stroke, partiall}^ arrested the motion of the canoe by a back- 

 water movement of his paddle. 



In Simbo or Eddystone Island, the bodies of the dead are some- 

 times placed amongst the large masses of rock which lie at the base 

 of Middle Hill on the west coast of the island. My attention was 

 first attracted to this custom by the stench that came from this spot 

 as I yjassed it in a canoe. Some human bones were observed on the 

 reef which lies off" the anchoraofe. In the eastern islands the dead are 

 often buried at sea. In Ugi and in Florida the skulls are sometimes 

 preserved in a cairn of stones built on the edge of a sea cliff, or at 

 the extremity of a point, or in some remote islet. A dwarf cocoa-nut, 

 which attains a height of from eight to twelve feet, frequently marks 

 the grave of the chief in the island of Ugi. In one of the villages of 

 this island I was shown the shrine of a chief, a small house in which 

 suspended from the roof in a basket were the skulls of the chief and 

 liis wife concealed from view by a screen of palm leaves. Some 



