106 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



Tikopia, interment takes place either in the house or 

 within a structure representing a house, while in Tonga and 

 Samoa the bodies of chiefs are interred in vaults built of 

 stone. Often the body is buried in a canoe or in a hollowed 

 log of wood, which represents a canoe " (69, p. 269). From 

 the evidence to which reference has been made in the 

 course of the present memoir it is unnecessary to insist at 

 any length on the importance and obvious significance 

 of these facts. But I question the inference Rivers draws 

 (p. 270) from the burial in boats. He says "the practice 

 can be regarded as a result of the fact of migration, and 

 does not show that the use of a canoe was the practice ot 

 the immigrants in their original home." The practice is 

 so wide-spread, however, and in Egypt and elsewhere had 

 such a deep-rooted significance that it is difficult to believe 

 this custom was not brought by the immigrants \v r ith them. 

 I am willing to admit that the special circumstances of the 

 people of Oceania naturally emphasized what may be 

 called the " boat-element " in the funerary ritual ; but the 

 association of the use of boats with burial is so curious 

 and constant a feature of the " heliolithic " culture where- 

 ever it manifests itself {vide supra) as hardly to have 

 arisen independently in different parts of the area of 

 distribution. 



" A second mode or treatment is preservation of the 

 body, either in the house or on a stage often covered with 

 a roof. Some kind of mummification is usually practised 

 in these cases, by continual rubbing with oil, drying by 

 means of a fire, and puncture of the body to hasten the 

 disappearance of the products of decomposition." 



" In some parts of Samoa there is a definite process of 

 embalming in which the viscera are removed and buried. 

 A body thus treated lies on a platform resting upon a 

 double canoe, and in many other places a canoe is used 



