es of mortality, the old
skulls are removed to make room for the new ones and are thrown away in
a sort of charnel-house, where the other bones are deposited after they
have been dug up from the graves. Such a charnel-house is called a
_tjoll paru_. There is one such place for the bones of grown men and
another for the bones of women and children. Some bones, however, are
kept and used as ornaments or as means to work magic with. For the dead
are often invoked, for example, to lay the wind or for other useful
purposes; and at such invocations the bones play a part.[371]

[Sidenote: Spirits of the dead thought to be the causes of sickness and
disease.]

But while the spirits of the dead are thus invited to help their living
relations and friends, they are also feared as the causes of sickness
and disease. Any serious ailment is usually attributed to magic or
witchcraft, and the treatment which is resorted to aims rather at
breaking the spell which has been cast on the sick man than at curing
his malady by the application of physical remedies. In short the remedy
is exorcism rather than physic. Now the enchantment under which the
patient is supposed to be labouring is often, though not always,
ascribed to the malignant arts of the spirits of the dead, or the _mos_,
as the natives of Tumleo call them. In such a case the ghosts are
thought to be clinging to the body of the sufferer, and the object of
the medical treatment is to detach them from him and send them far away.
With this kindly intention some men will go into the forest and collect
a number of herbs, including a kind of peppermint. These are tied into
one or more bundles according to the number of the patients and then
taken to the men's clubhouse (_alol_), where they are heated over a
fire. Then the patient is brought, and two men strike him lightly with
the packet of herbs on his body and legs, while they utter an
incantation, inviting the ancestral spirits who are plaguing him to
leave his body and go away, in order that he may be made whole. One such
incantation, freely translated, runs thus: "Spirit of the
great-grandfather, of the father, come out! We give thee coco-nuts,
sago-porridge, fish. Go away (from the sick man). Let him be well. Do no
harm here and there. Tell the people of Leming (O spirit) to give us
tobacco. When the waves are still, we push off from the land, sailing
northward (to Tumleo). It is the time of the north-west wind (when the
surf