, no doubt in past times acted as a wholesome deterrent on
evil-doers and helped to keep the people from crime, though now-a-days
they look rather to the law than to ghosts for the protection of their
rights and the avenging of their wrongs.[287] Yet here, as in so many
places, it would seem that superstition has proved a useful crutch on
which morality can lean until it is strong enough to walk alone. In the
absence of the police the guardianship of law and morality may be
provisionally entrusted to ghosts, who, if they are too fickle and
uncertain in their temper to make ideal constables, are at least better
than nothing. With this exception it does not appear that the moral code
of the Torres Straits Islanders derived any support or sanction from
their religion. No appeal was made by them to totems, ancestors, or
heroes; no punishment was looked for from these quarters for any
infringement of the rules and restraints which hold society
together.[288]

[Sidenote: The island home of the dead.]

The land of the dead to which the ghosts finally depart is, in the
opinion of the Torres Straits Islanders, a mythical island in the far
west or rather north-west. The Western Islanders name it Kibu; the
Eastern Islanders call it Boigu. The name Kibu means "sundown." It is
natural enough that islanders should place the home of the dead in some
far island of the sea to which no canoe of living men has ever sailed,
and it is equally natural that the fabulous island should lie to
westward where the sun goes down; for it seems to be a common thought
that the souls of the dead are attracted by the great luminary, like
moths by a candle, and follow him when he sinks in radiant glory into
the sea. To take a single example, in the Maram district of Assam it is
forbidden to build houses facing westward, because that is the direction
in which the spirits of the dead go to their long home.[289] But the
Torres Straits Islanders have a special reason, as Dr. Haddon has well
pointed out, for thinking that the home of the dead is away in the
north-west; and the reason is that in these latitudes the trade wind
blows steady and strong from the south-east for seven or eight months of
the year; so that for the most part the spirits have only to let
themselves go and the wind will sweep them away on its pinions to their
place of rest. How could the poor fluttering things beat up to windward
in the teeth of the blast?[290]

[Sidenote: Elaborate f