observed by their subjects. Thus
among the Sakalava and Antimerina of Madagascar, "when a sovereign or a
prince of the royal family dies within the enclosure of the king's
palace, the corpse must be carried out of the palace, not by the door,
but by a breach made for the purpose in the wall; the new sovereign
could not pass through the door that had been polluted by the passage of
a dead body."[768] Similarly among the Macassars and Buginese of
Southern Celebes there is in the king's palace a window reaching to the
floor through which on his decease the king's body is carried out.[769]
That such a custom is only a limitation to kings of a rule which once
applied to everybody becomes all the more probable, when we learn that
in the island of Saleijer, which lies to the south of Celebes, each
house has, besides its ordinary windows, a large window in the form of a
door, through which, and not through the ordinary entrance, every corpse
is regularly removed at death.[770]

[Sidenote: Another Fijian funeral custom.]

To return from this digression to Fiji, we may conclude with a fair
degree of probability that when the side of a Fijian king's house was
broken down to allow his corpse to be carried out, though there were
doors at hand wide enough for the purpose, the original intention was to
prevent the return of his ghost, who might have proved a very unwelcome
intruder to his successor on the throne. But I cannot offer any
explanation of another Fijian funeral custom. You may remember that in
Fiji it was customary after the death of a chief to circumcise such lads
as had reached a suitable age.[771] Well, on the fifth day after a
chief's death a hole used to be dug under the floor of a temple and one
of the newly circumcised lads was secreted in it. Then his companions
fastened the doors of the temple securely and ran away. When the lad
hidden in the hole blew on a shell-trumpet, the friends of the deceased
chief surrounded the temple and thrust their spears at him through the
fence.[772] What the exact significance of this curious rite may have
been, I cannot even conjecture; but we may assume that it had something
to do with the state of the late chief's soul, which was probably
supposed to be lingering in the neighbourhood.

[Sidenote: Fijian notions concerning the other world and the way
thither. The River of the Souls.]

It remains to say a little as to the notions which the Fijians
entertained of the other worl