of food; prayers for
the promotion of moral virtue are seemingly unknown. For example, if a
woman laboured hard in childbirth, she was thought to be bewitched, and
prayers would be offered to the spirits of dead ancestors to counteract
the spell. Again, young men are instructed by their elders in the useful
art of cursing the enemies of the tribe; and among a rich variety of
imprecations an old man will invoke the spirit of his brother, father,
or uncle, or all of them, to put their fingers into the ears of the
enemy that he may not hear, to cover his eyes that he may not see, and
to stop his mouth that he may not cry for help, but may fall an easy
prey to the curser and his friends.[643] More amiable and not less
effectual are the prayers offered to the spirits of the dead over a sick
man. At the mention of each name in the prayer the supplicants make a
chirping or hissing sound, and rub lime over the patient. Before
administering medicine they pray over it to the spirits of the dead;
then the patient gulps it down, thus absorbing the virtue of the
medicine and of the prayer in one. In New Britain they reinforce the
prayers to the dead in time of need by wearing the jawbone of the
deceased; and in the Duke of York Island people often wear a tooth or
some hair of a departed relative, not merely as a mark of respect, but
as a magical means of obtaining supernatural help.[644]

[Sidenote: North Melanesian views as to the land of the dead.]

Sooner or later the souls of all the North Melanesian dead take their
departure for the spirit land. But the information which has reached the
living as to that far country is at once vague and inconsistent. They
call it _Matana nion_, but whereabout it lies they cannot for the most
part precisely tell. All they know for certain is that it is far away,
and that there is always some particular spot in the neighbourhood from
which the souls take their departure; for example, the Duke of York
ghosts invariably start from the little island of Nuruan, near Mioko.
Wherever it may be, the land of souls is divided into compartments;
people who have died of sickness or witchcraft go to one place, and
people who have been killed in battle go to another. They do not go
unattended; for when a man dies two friends sleep beside his corpse the
first night, one on each side, and their spirits are believed to
accompany the soul of the dead man to the spirit land. They say that on
their arrival in the