efly to the flesh of women. Sometimes a man's mother was
strangled as well as his wives. Thus Ngavindi, a young chief of Lasakau,
was laid in the grave with a wife at his side, his mother at his feet,
and a servant not far off. However, men as well as women were killed to
follow their masters to the far country. The confidential companion of a
chief was expected as a matter of common decency to die with his lord;
and if he shirked the duty, he fell in the public esteem. When Mbithi, a
chief of high rank and greatly esteemed in Mathuata, died in the year
1840, not only his wife but five men with their wives were strangled to
form the floor of his grave. They were laid on a layer of mats, and the
body of the chief was stretched upon them.[687] There used to be a
family in Vanua Levu which enjoyed the high privilege of supplying a
hale man to be buried with the king of Fiji on every occasion of a royal
decease. It was quite necessary that the man should be hale and hearty,
for it was his business to grapple with the Fijian Cerberus in the other
world, while his majesty slipped past into the abode of bliss.[688]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices of foreskins and fingers in honour of the dead.
Circumcision performed on a lad as a propitiatory sacrifice to save the
life of his father or father's brother. The rite of circumcision
followed by a licentious orgy.]

A curious sacrifice offered in honour of a dead chief consisted in the
foreskins of all the boys who had arrived at a suitable age; the lads
were circumcised on purpose to furnish them. Many boys had their little
fingers chopped off on the same occasion, and the severed foreskins and
fingers were placed in the chief's grave. When this bloody rite had been
performed, the chief's relatives presented young bread-fruit trees to
the mutilated boys, whose friends were bound to cultivate them till the
boys could do it for themselves.[689] Women as well as boys had their
fingers cut off in mourning. We read of a case when after the death of a
king of Fiji sixty fingers were amputated and being each inserted in a
slit reed were stuck along the eaves of the king's house.[690] Why
foreskins and fingers were buried with a dead chief or stuck up on the
roof of his house, we are not informed, and it is not easy to divine.
Apparently we must suppose that, when they were buried with the body,
they were thought to be of some assistance to the departed spirit in the
land of souls. At all events it