RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 53 



1 



articles of food, including a portion of an opossum, together with a 



large wooden bowl, were hung up before the screen. 



The burial place for men in the village of Sapuna in Santa Anna 

 is an oblono- enclosure in the midst of the village which measures 2-i 

 by 18 feet, and is surrounded by a low wall of fragments of coral 

 limestone. In this space all the bodies are buried, at a depth of hve 

 or six feet ; and after some time the skulls are exhumed and placed 

 inside the wooden figure of a shark about three feet in length, which 

 is deposited in the tambu-house. One of these wooden fish, which 

 lay on the surface of the burial ground at the time of my visit, had 

 recently been removed from the tambu-house on account of its being- 

 rotten through age, and the skull was to be re-interred. The body 

 of a chief is placed at once in the tambu-house in a wooden shark of 

 sufiicient size. Women are buried in another ground, and the 

 wooden sharks containing their skulls are deposited in a small 

 house by the side of the tambu-house. 



Into the subject of the superstitions and religious beliefs which 

 are held by the natives of the Solomon Islands I shall barely enter, 

 as onh'- those who have become familiar with the natives by long 

 residence among them, and who have acquired an intimate know- 

 ledge of their language, can hope to avoid the numerous pitfalls into 

 which the unwary observer is so likely to fall. I would, therefore, 

 refer the reader for information on this subject to a paper by the 

 Rev. R H. Codrington, entitled " Religious Beliefs and Practices in 

 Melanesia," which was published in the Journal of the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute (vol. x.,p. 261). Through Lieutenant Malan's know- 

 ledge of the Fijian tongue, a language understood by the men who 

 had served their term on the Fiji plantations, I learned that the 

 natives of Treasury and the Shortlands believe in a Good Spirit 

 (nito drehona) who lives in a pleasant land whither all men who have 

 lived good lives go after death, and that all the bad men are trans- 

 ported to the crater of Bagana, the burning volcano of Bougainville, 

 which is the home of the Evil Spirit {nito paitena) and his com- 

 panion spirits. That the natives of the Shortlands really beheve in 

 some future state is shown in the following singular superstition 

 which came under my notice at Alu. I was returning one night in 

 Gorai's war canoe from one of my excursions, when I noticed that the 

 chief and his men were iookino- towards the coral island of Balalai 

 which lies a few miles distant from the anchorage. , They told me 

 they were looking for a bright light which was sometimes to be 



