102 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



burial are described as being practised in New Caledonia. 

 The first is burial in the flexed position ; 2nd, extended 

 burial in caves ; 3rd, exposure of the body in trees or on 

 the mountains ; 4th, mummification ; 5th, the body erect 

 or reposing in a dug-out canoe. With regard to the 

 method of embalming, this is practised only in the case 

 of a chief. The body of a chief soon after death was 

 covered with pricks into which were introduced the juices 

 of certain plants with the object of preventing decompo- 

 sition of the tissues. Afterwards the body was suitably 

 dried or smoked, then it was dressed in its best clothes, 

 its face painted red and black, and then the body was 

 preserved indefinitely. A hole was made at the top of 

 the hut, and by means of this they haul up the mummy. 

 After it has been exposed in this way for a certain time, 

 the body was withdrawn from the hole into the house, 

 which was then carefully shut up and became taboo with 

 all that it contained. Analogous customs are found in 

 New Zealand and elsewhere in Oceania. A singularly 

 strange custom is now in use in the New Hebrides and 

 in the Solomon Islands. The father and son, for example, 

 or the husband and wife, having just died, they smoke 

 the head alone as in New Zealand, but they make (with 

 bamboo covered with cloth) a mannikin, having roughly 

 the human form ; then they tattoo the whole of the sur- 

 face ; fastened upon each shoulder — and this is the 

 strange part of it — is a piece of bamboo, to one of which 

 they attach the father's head and the other that of his 

 son. [The account is not altogether intelligible here.] 

 The heads are painted white and black. With reference 

 to the placing of the body in a canoe, this is reserved for 

 chiefs only. When a chief dies, messengers go in all 

 directions, repeating " The sun is set." This expression 

 springs from the idea that the chief is a god, the supreme 

 Sun-god. 



