PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
127 
stage erected either in a house vacated for the purpose, in which 
the coffin is placed, or a small house of sufficient size to contain 
the coffin is built in front of a tabbooed house on the platform of 
stones in which the coffin is deposited: the former is practised 
with the corps of women, the latter with those of men; guar¬ 
dians are appointed to sleep near and protect them. When the 
flesh is mouldered from the bones, they are, as I have been in¬ 
formed, carefully cleansed: some are kept for relics and some are 
deposited in the morals. 
Their fans, of which they are very careful, are made with sur¬ 
prising neatness, and consist of a curious piece of matt work, of a 
semi-circular form, attached to a handle, generally representing 
four figures of their gods, two above and two below, squatting 
back to back. The fans are made of a stiff kind of grass, or per¬ 
haps the palmetto leaf, and the handies either of sandal wood, toa, 
ivory? or human bones, neatly carved into figures of their gods. 
These fans are held in high estimation. by them, and they take 
much pains in preserving them clean, whitening them from time 
to time with chalk, or some other similar substance. This ap¬ 
pendage to their dress, I am informed, is common to all the 
islands of the groups of Marquesas and Washington; indeed we 
saw several at Rooahoogah. 
Mr. Fluerien in his narrative of the voyage of captain Marchand 
gives the following description of the fans*seen by that navigator 
while at St. Christiana: “ Among their ornaments, we may like- 
u wise reckon large fans, formed of the fibres of some plaited 
“ bark or coarse grass, which they frequently whiten with lime, 
u and which they make use of to cool themselves; and parasols 
a made of large palm leaves, which they adorn with feathers of 
u different sizes and various colours.” (Page 156, voi. i.) 
This description is badly calculated to give a correct idea of 
their neatness, I may say elegance, which is not surpassed by any 
other work to be found among them. In his description of their 
stilts, he is very minute and accurate, and equally incorrect in his 
conjectures as to their use; he supposes them intended for the 
purpose of fording the streams, which he believes are occasioned 
by the frequent inundations to which he thinks the island is lia¬ 
ble: I can assure Mr. Fleurien that they are used only for amuse- 
