ea, near Maivara, at the head of Milne Bay. The land of
the dead, as usual, resembles in all respects the land of the living,
except that it is day there when it is night at Wagawaga, and the dead
speak of the upper world in the language of Milne Bay instead of in that
of Wagawaga. A certain being called Tumudurere receives the ghosts on
their arrival and directs them where to make their gardens. The souls of
living men and women can journey to the land of the dead and return to
earth; indeed this happens not unfrequently. There is a man at Wagawaga
who has often gone thither and come back; whenever he wishes to make the
journey, he has nothing to do but to smear himself with a magical stuff
and to fall asleep, after which he soon wakes up in Hiyoyoa. At first
the ghosts whom he met in the other world did not invite him to partake
of their food, because they knew that if he did so he could not return
to the land of the living; but apparently practice has rendered him
immune to the usually fatal effects of the food of the dead.[340] Though
Hiyoyoa, at the head of Milne Bay, lies to the west of Wagawaga, the
dead are buried in a squatting posture with their faces turned to the
east, in order that their souls may depart to the other world.[341]
Immediately after the funeral the relations who have taken part in the
burial go down to the sea and bathe, and so do the widow and children of
the deceased because they supported the dying husband and father in his
extremity. After bathing in the sea the widow and children shave their
heads.[342] Both the bathing and the shaving are doubtless forms of
ceremonial purification; in other words, they are designed to rid the
survivors of the taint of death, or perhaps more definitely to remove
the ghost from their persons, to which he may be supposed to cling like
a burr. At Bartle Bay the dead are buried on their sides with their
heads pointing in the direction from which the totem clan of the
deceased is said to have come originally; and various kinds of food, of
which the dead man had partaken in his last illness, are deposited,
along with some paltry personal ornaments, in the grave. Apparently the
food is intended to serve as provision for the ghost on his journey to
the other world. Curiously enough, the widow is forbidden to eat of the
same kinds of food of which her husband ate during his last illness, and
the prohibition is strictly observed until after the last of the funeral
fe