nly of
houses but even of clothes, the natives of Torres Straits live in
settled villages and diligently till the soil, raising a variety of
crops, such as yams, sweet potatoes, bananas, sugar-cane, and
tobacco.[275] Of the two groups of islands the eastern is the more
fertile and the inhabitants are more addicted to agriculture than are
the natives of the western islands, who, as a consequence of the greater
barrenness of the soil, have to eke out their subsistence to a
considerable extent by fishing.[276] And there is other evidence to shew
that the Eastern Islanders have attained to a somewhat higher stage of
social evolution than their Western brethren;[277] the more favourable
natural conditions under which they live may possibly have contributed
to raise the general level of culture. One of the most marked
distinctions in this respect between the inhabitants of the two groups
is that, whereas a regular system of totemism with its characteristic
features prevails among the Western Islanders, no such system nor even
any very clear evidence of its former existence is to be found among the
Eastern Islanders, whether it be that they never had it or, what is more
likely, that they once had but have lost it.[278]

[Sidenote: Belief of the Torres Straits Islanders in the existence of
the human spirit after death.]

On the other hand, so far as regards our immediate subject, the belief
in immortality and the worship of the dead, a general resemblance may be
traced between the creed and customs of the Eastern and Western tribes.
Both of them, like the Australian aborigines, firmly believe in the
existence of the human spirit after death, but unlike the Australians
they seem to have no idea that the souls of the departed are ever born
again into the world; the doctrine of reincarnation, so widespread among
the natives of Australia, appears to have no place in the creed of their
near neighbours the Torres Straits Islanders, whose dead, like our own,
though they may haunt the living for a time, are thought to depart at
last to a distant spirit-land and to return no more. At the same time
neither in the one group nor in the other is there any clear evidence of
what may be called a worship of the dead in the strict sense of the
word, unless we except the cults of certain more or less mythical
heroes. On this point the testimony of Dr. Haddon is definite as to the
Western Islanders. He says: "In no case have I obtained in the We