uneral ceremonies observed by the Torres Straits
Islanders.]

The funeral ceremonies observed by the Torres Straits Islanders were
numerous and elaborate, and they present some features of special
interest. They succeeded each other at intervals, sometimes of months,
and amongst the Eastern Islanders in particular there were so many of
them that, were it not that the bodies of the very young and the very
old were treated less ceremoniously, the living would have been
perpetually occupied in celebrating the obsequies of the dead.[291] The
obsequies differed somewhat from each other in the East and the West,
but they had two characteristics in common: first, the skulls of the
dead were commonly preserved apart from the bodies and were consulted as
oracles; and, second, the ghosts of the recently deceased were
represented in dramatic ceremonies by masked men, who mimicked the gait
and gestures of the departed and were thought by the women and children
to be the very ghosts themselves. But in details there were a good many
variations between the practice of the Eastern and the Western
Islanders. We will begin with the customs of the Western Islanders.

[Sidenote: Funeral ceremonies observed by the Western Islanders. Removal
and preservation of the skull. Skulls used in divination.]

When a death had taken place, the corpse was carried out of the house
and set on a staging supported by four forked posts and covered by a
roof of mats. The office of attending to the body devolved properly on
the brothers-in-law (_imi_) of the deceased, who, while they were
engaged in the duties of the office, bore the special title of _mariget_
or "ghost-hand." It deserves to be noticed that these men were always of
a different totem from the deceased; for if the dead person was a man,
the _mariget_ were his wife's brothers and therefore had the same totem
as the dead man's wife, which, on account of the law of exogamy, always
differed from the totem of her husband. And if the dead person was a
woman, the _mariget_ were her husband's brothers and therefore had his
totem, which necessarily differed from hers. When they had discharged
the preliminary duties to the corpse, the brothers-in-law went and
informed the relations and friends. This they did not in words but by a
prescribed pantomime. For example, if the deceased had had the crocodile
for his totem, they imitated the ungainly gait of crocodiles waddling
and resting, if the deceased had