PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
place. Wilson could not accompany me there, and I was not ena¬ 
bled to make inquiry on many subjects; but observing that they 
treated all their gods with little respect, frequently catching them 
by their large ears, drawing my attention to their wide mouths, their 
flat noses, and large eyes, and pointing out to me, by signs, all 
their other deformities. I told Wilson to inform them I thought 
they treated their gods very disrespectfully—they told me that 
those were like themselves, mere attendants on their divinity, as 
they were on the priest; that I had not yet seen their greatest of 
all gods, that he was in a small house, which they pointed out, 
situated at the corner of the grove; and on my expressing a de¬ 
sire to see him, after a short consultation among themselves, they 
brought him out on the branch of the cocoa-nut tree, when I was 
surprised to find him only a parcel of paper cloth secured to a 
piece of a spear about four feet long; it in some measure resem ¬ 
bled a child in swaddling cloths, and the part intended to repre¬ 
sent the head had a number of strips of cloth hanging from it 
about a foot in length; I could not help laughing at the ridiculous 
appearance of the god they worshipped, in which they all joined 
me with a great deal ol good humour, some of them dandling and 
nursing the god, as a child would her doll. They now asked me 
if I should like to see some of their religious ceremonies, and on 
my answering in the affirmative, they seated themselves in a ring, 
and placed the god, with the cocoa-nut branch under him, on the 
ground; one of them stood in the circle before the god, and as 
soon as the others began to sing and clap their hands, he fell to 
dancing with all his might, cutting affiumber of antic capers, then 
picking up the god, and whirling it over his shoulders several 
times, laid it down again, when a pause ensued: they now began 
another song, when the dancer, with no less violence than before, 
after whirling the god about, carried it out of the circle and laid 
it down on the ground: then shifted it from place to place, and 
afterwards returned it to the cocoa-nut branch within the circle. 
After a short pause the dancer asked the singers several questions 
with great earnestness, and on their all answering in the affirma¬ 
tive, he took up the god on the branch and deposited it in the 
house. I inquired of Wilson the purport of the song, he told me 
they were singing the praises of their god; but this was all he 
