kes them to be ghosts like
himself, and accordingly he may in confidence impart to them most
valuable information, such for example as full particulars with regard
to the real cause of his death. This priceless intelligence the
ghost-seer hastens to communicate to his fellow tribesmen.[355]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]

When a man has just died and been buried, his surviving relatives lay
some of his weapons and ornaments, together with presents of food, upon
his grave, no doubt for the use of the ghost; but some of these things
they afterwards remove and bring back to the village, probably
considering, with justice, that they will be more useful to the living
than to the dead. But offerings to the dead may be presented to them at
other places than their tombs. "The great power," says Dr. Landtman,
"which the dead represent to the living has given rise to a sort of
simple offering to them, almost the only kind of offering met with among
the Kiwai Papuans. The natives occasionally lay down presents of food at
places to which spirits come, and utter some request for assistance
which the spirits are supposed to hear."[356] In such offerings and
prayers we may detect the elements of a regular worship of the dead.

[Sidenote: Dreams as a source of the belief in immortality.]

With regard to the source of these beliefs among the Kiwai people Dr.
Landtman observes that "undoubtedly dreams have largely contributed in
supplying the natives with ideas about Adiri and life after death. A
great number of dreams collected by me among the Kiwai people tell of
wanderings to Adiri or of meetings with spirits of dead men, and as
dreams are believed to describe the real things which the soul sees
while roaming about outside the body, we understand that they must
greatly influence the imagination of the people."[357]

That concludes what I have to say as to the belief in immortality and
the worship of the dead among the natives of British New Guinea. In the
following lectures I shall deal with the same rudimentary aspect of
religion as it is reported to exist among the aborigines of the vast
regions of German and Dutch New Guinea.

[Footnote 310: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 1 _sq._]

[Footnote 311: See below, pp. 242, 256, 261 _sq._, 291.]

[Footnote 312: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_
(London, 1901), pp. 249 _sq._ As to the Motu and their Melanesian