GENERAL ACCOUNT HEDLBY. 51 



gods had been asked." The destruction of these temples by 

 Christian converts in 1877 is related by Dr. Gill.* 



Upon Nanomana Dr. Gill remarked to a native : " ' Jehovah 

 made the sky, the ocean, and all men.' The prompt reply was, 

 ' Very likely Jehovah made you and your land ; but the good 

 gods Maumau and Foelangi' (their ancestors who came from 

 Samoa) 'made us and Nanomanga.' .... They worship 

 shooting stars and rainbows ; but the principal objects of adora- 

 tion are the skulls and jawbones of the dead Crowds 



of men ran to the beach to meet us, besmeared with ashes mixed 

 with oil, each wearing the sacred leaflet on the left arm, with 

 necklaces of flowers. In this costume they had been dancing 

 and performing their wild incantations to the gods during the 

 night. The response of the oracle was, that no foreign god or 

 instructor should dwell on the land sacred to Maumau and 



Foilangi In one of these temples on a large swing 



tray we counted eleven human skulls ; on another tray, nine. 

 It was to accommodate these skulls that the temples were built. 

 It is the disgusting custom in Nanomanga, when a great chief 

 or much loved head of a family dies, to bury the corpse, but 

 on the third day, the head is removed, and the flesh gnawed 

 off and eaten raw with coconut by the sacred men.f The clean 

 skull with the jawbone are then put on a tray in the appropriate 



temple, and thenceforth become objects of worship 



I called on King Atupa. He was reclining on a mat, with an 

 ominous cough, and seemingly far gone in consumption. We 

 were told that on his death his skull would be added to the tray 

 of gods in the adjoining temple."J 



" In Ellice's Group skulls of head chiefs are hung up in houses 

 and taken down periodically, and oiled during the weeping and 

 wailing of women. I was present at one such ceremony, At 

 some islands the women not only weep, but beat their eyes from 

 time to time with their fingers, until the eyelids are so swollen 

 as to render it necessary to keep in the house for some days." 



An extraordinary species of quarantine is thus described by 

 Mr. Whitmee || at Nanomea : " At this island and at Nanomanga 

 there are some singular heathen ceremonies gone through on the 

 arrival of a ship or a canoe from another island. As these 

 ceremonies occupy from six to eight hours, the whole of which is 

 spent in a burning sun, and the ceremonies are not of the most 

 pleasant nature, I was desirous of escaping their infliction if 



* Gill loc. cit., p. 24. 



t" By the teeth of children," according to Turner loc. cit., p. 289. 



J Gill loc. cit., p. 21. 



(? Gill in) Davis Anthrop. Rev., vii., p. 192. 



|| Whitmee loc. cit., p. 24. 



