uman soul as a miniature of the man himself. This may be
inferred from the customs observed at the death of a chief among the
Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men who are the hereditary
undertakers call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats,
saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come
over the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the
ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they
attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close
to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a
missionary, "His soul is only a little child."[661]

[Sidenote: Absence of the soul in sleep. Catching the soul of a rascal
in a scarf.]

The souls of some men were supposed to quit their bodies in sleep and
enter into the bodies of other sleepers, troubling and disturbing them.
A soul that had contracted this bad habit was called a _yalombula_. When
any one fainted or died, his vagrant spirit might, so the Fijians
thought, be induced to come back by calling after it. Sometimes, on
awaking from a nap, a stout man might be seen lying at full length and
bawling out lustily for the return of his own soul.[662] In the windward
islands of Fiji there used to be an ordeal called _yalovaki_ which was
much dreaded by evil-doers. When the evidence was strong against
suspected criminals, and they stubbornly refused to confess, the chief,
who was also the judge, would call for a scarf, with which "to catch
away the soul of the rogue." A threat of the rack could not have been
more effectual. The culprit generally confessed at the sight and even
the mention of the light instrument; but if he did not, the scarf would
be waved over his head until his soul was caught in it like a moth or a
fly, after which it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the small
end of a chief's canoe, and for want of his soul the suspected person
would pine and die.[663]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of sorcery and witchcraft.]

Further, the Fijians, like many other savages, stood in great terror of
witchcraft, believing that the sorcerer had it in his power to kill them
by the practice of his nefarious art. "Of all their superstitions," says
Thomas Williams, "this exerts the strongest influence on the minds of
the people. Men who laugh at the pretensions of the priest tremble at
the power of the wizard; and those who become christians lose this fear
la