POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
165 
wildest flights of imagination, to have occurred to them. 
When first declared by the Missionaries, it merely 
awakened astonishment, and was considered as one 
among the many novel and striking facts connected with 
the doctrines which the new religion unfolded. But 
as the subject was more frequently brought under their 
notice in public discourse, or in reading the Scriptures, 
and their minds were more attentively exercised upon it 
in connexion with their ancestry, themselves, and their 
descendants, it appeared invested with more than ordi¬ 
nary difficulty; bordering, to their apprehension, on 
impossibility. On this, as well as other equally im¬ 
portant points, their queries, from native simplicity 
and entire ignorance, were sometimes both puerile and 
amusing. 
A number of the attendants on the queen’s sister, 
soon after their reception of Christianity, canie to the 
meeting, and stated that one of their friends had died a 
few days before, and that they had buried the corpse 
according to their ancient manner, not laying it straight 
in a coffin, as Christians were accustomed to do, but 
placing it in a sitting posture, with the face between the 
knees, the hands under the thighs, and the whole body 
bound round with cords. Since the interment, (they 
added,) they had been thinking about the resurrection, 
and wished to know how the body would then appear, 
whether, if left in that manner, it would not rise de¬ 
formed, and whether they had not better disinter the 
corpse, and deposit it in a straight or horizontal po¬ 
sition. A suitable reply was of course returned. 
They were directed to let it remain undisturbed— 
that probably long before the resurrection it would be so 
completely dissolved, and mingled with the surrounding 
