1883 .] Some Ethnological Observations . 383 
Having read in your Journal that the Australian aborigines 
are in the habit of burying their excrements, I remembered 
a sojourn of fourteen months once endured by me in St. 
David’s Islands, off the north coast of New Guinea. The 
inhabitants were in all eight, viz., two old men, two young 
men, one old woman, one young woman, who was a widow 
with two children— daughters. These people buried their 
excrements in the sands of the sea-shore. Another very 
peculiar custom I observed was that the widow, once a 
month, when her times were upon her, was considered un- 
clean, and went to live for a few days with her two children 
in a hut near the beach, just within shade of the fringing 
cocoa-nut trees. Her friends brought food every day, and 
enquired after her health, but did not approach to within a 
few yards of her, nor would they, even while she was in re- 
tirement, pass between her and the sea. Even if walking 
on the beach they would, on approaching her hut, make a 
detour within the trees, coming out on to the beach again on 
getting past the hut. 
There were some graves in which they said were deposited 
the bones of chiefs (the islands had formerly been more 
populous). They said that they hove into the sea, beyond 
the surrounding coral barrier, the corpses of common people. 
I asked if they had any idea that their dead friends would live 
again ? and they said “ No, pitch ’em overboard, and there’s 
an end of them.” 
These people, although they lived in a group of cocoa- 
nut islands, did not know how to make oil, and were asto- 
nished at the brilliancy of my reading-lamp, fed with oil 
made on the spot by my servants. 
The men had sometimes gone whaling for a few months, 
in ships which lay to off their reefs, and had acquired some 
phrases of English. Thus they called sunrise and sunset 
“ sun up ” and “ sun down.” In offering me a drink of 
toddy they would say “ Put it out of sight.” But they had 
not been taught to swear. I remember that the name of 
one man was Merri witty, evidently from some sailor 
named Meriweather ; that of another was Mollymock 
(? Dollymop). 
They said that many years before a large boat, having in 
her about thirty men, had been blown from the N.W. to 
their islands. The strangers spoke the same language as 
they did. After a visit of about ten days’ duration these 
people left again for the N.W. (I thought these visitors 
might be from St. Andrew’s Islands), The St. David’s 
people said they had never been in the habit of sailing 
