406 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
not be kept more than twelve months. When 
they began to decay, the bones, &c. were buried, 
but the skull was preserved in the family some¬ 
times for several generations, wrapt carefully in 
native cloth, and often suspended from some part 
of the roof of their habitations. In some of the 
islands they dried the bodies, and, wrapping them 
in numerous folds of cloth, suspended them also 
from the roofs of their dwelling-houses. 
The tribes inhabiting the islands of the Pacific 
were remarkably superstitious, and among them 
none more so than the inhabitants of the Georgian 
and Society Islands. They imagined they lived 
in a world of spirits, which surrounded them night 
and day, watching every action of their lives, and 
ready to avenge the slightest neglect, or the least 
disobedience to their injunctions, as proclaimed by 
their priests. * 
These dreaded beings were seldom thought to 
resort to the habitations of men on errands of 
benevolence. They were supposed to haunt the 
places of their former abode, to arouse the sur¬ 
vivors from their slumbers by making a squeaking 
noise, to which, when the natives heard, they would 
sometimes reply, asking what they were, what 
they wanted, &c. Sometimes the spirits upbraided 
the living with former wickedness, or the neglect 
of some ceremonious enactment, for which they 
were unhappy. 
When a person was seized with convulsions or 
hysterics, it was said to be from seizure by the 
spirits, who sometimes scratched their faces, tore 
their hair, or otherwise maltreated them. For 
some time after the death of Taaroarii we could 
seldom induce any of our servants to go out of the 
house after it was dark, under an apprehension 
