o get their shell money. Others suppose that it is in
the islands off Cape Takes. So when they are sailing past these islands
they dip the paddles softly in the water, and observe a death-like
stillness, cowering down in the canoes, lest the ghosts should spy them
and do them a mischief. At the entrance to these happy isles is posted a
stern watchman to see that no improper person sneaks into them. To every
ghost that arrives he puts three questions, "Who are you? Where do you
come from? How much shell money did you leave behind you?" On his
answers to these three questions hangs the fate of the ghost. If he left
much money, he is free to enter the realm of bliss, where he will pass
the time with other happy souls smoking and eating and enjoying other
sensual delights. But if he left little or no money, he is banished the
earthly paradise and sent home to roam like a wild beast in the forest,
battening on leaves and filth. With bitter sighs and groans he prowls
about the villages at night and seeks to avenge himself by scaring or
plaguing the survivors. To stay his hunger and appease his wrath
relatives or friends will sometimes set forth food for him to devour.
Yet even for such an impecunious soul there is hope; for if somebody
only takes pity on him and gives a feast in his honour and distributes
shell money to the guests, the ghost may return to the islands of the
blest, and the door will be thrown open to him.[646]

[Sidenote: Fiji and the Fijians.]

So much for the belief in immortality as it is reported to exist among
the Northern Melanesians of New Britain and the Bismarck Archipelago. We
now pass to the consideration of a similar belief among another people
of the same stock, who have been longer known to Europe, the Fijians.
The archipelago which they occupy lies to the east of the New Hebrides
and forms in fact the most easterly outpost of the black Melanesian race
in the Pacific. Beyond it to the eastward are situated the smaller
archipelagoes of Samoa and Tonga, inhabited by branches of the brown
Polynesian race, whose members are scattered over the islands of the
Pacific Ocean from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. Of
all the branches of the Melanesian stock the Fijians at the date of
their discovery by Europeans appear to have made the greatest advance in
culture, material, social, and political. "The Fijian," says one who
knew him long and intimately, "takes no mean place among savages in