in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools
consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man
was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this
one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the
forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off _malo_; he
gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed
even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This
ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the
forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace
of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were
kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy
_raras_."[668]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of ghosts. Uproar made to drive away ghosts.]

Of apparitions the Fijians used to be very much afraid. They believed
that the ghosts of the dead appeared often and afflicted mankind,
especially in sleep. The spirits of slain men, unchaste women, and women
who died in childbed were most dreaded. After a death people have been
known to hide themselves for a few days, until they supposed the soul of
the departed was at rest. Also they shunned the places where people had
been murdered, particularly when it rained, because then the moans of
the ghost could be heard as he sat up, trying to relieve his pain by
resting his poor aching head on the palms of his hands. Some however
said that the moans were caused by the soul of the murderer knocking
down the soul of his victim, whenever the wretched spirit attempted to
get up.[669] When Fijians passed a spot in the forest where a man had
been clubbed to death, they would sometimes throw leaves on it as a mark
of homage to his spirit, believing that they would soon be killed
themselves if they failed in thus paying their respects to the
ghost.[670] And after they had buried a man alive, as they very often
did, these savages used at nightfall to make a great din with large
bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, in order to drive away his spirit
and deter him from loitering about his old home. "The uproar is always
held in the late habitation of the deceased, the reason being that as no
one knows for a certainty what reception he will receive in the
invisible world, if it is not according to his expectations he will most
likely repent of his bargain and wish to come back. For that reason they
make