172 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cu. vir 
for their prayers by the surviving relations. During the 
ceremony emblematical devices are made use of; a young 
plantain tree signifies the deceased, and a bundle of feathers 
the deity invoked. Opposite to this the priest places 
himself, often attended by relations of the deceased, and 
always furnished with a small offering of some kind of 
eatables intended for the god. He begins by addressing 
the god by a set form of sentences, and during the time he 
repeats them employs himself in weaving cocoanut leaves 
into different forms, all which he disposes upon the grave 
where the bones have been deposited; the deity is then 
addressed by a shrill screech, used only on that occasion, 
and the offering presented to his representative (the little 
tuft of feathers), which after this is removed, and everything 
else left in statu quo, to the no small emolument of the rats, 
who quietly devour the offering. 
Religion has been jin all ages, and is still in all countries, 
clothed in mysteries inexplicable to human understanding. 
In the South Sea Islands it has still another disadvantage 
to any one who desires to investigate it: the language in 
which it is conveyed, or at least many words of it, is 
different from that of common conversation; so that although 
Tupia often showed the greatest desire to instruct us in it, 
he found it almost impossible. It is only necessary to 
remember how difficult it would be to reconcile the apparent 
inconsistencies of our own religion to the faith of an infidel, 
and to recollect how many excellent discourses are daily 
read to instruct even us in the faith which we profess, to 
excuse me when I declare that I know less of the religion of 
these people than of any other part of their policy. What 
I do know, however, I shall here write down, hoping that 
inconsistencies may not appear to the eye of the candid 
reader as absurdities. 
This universe and its marvellous parts must strike the 
most stupid with a desire of knowing from whence they 
themselves and it were produced; their priests, however, 
have not ideas sufficiently enlarged to adopt that of creation. 
That this world should have been originally created from 
