stles the seer, who is generally a woman, understands perfectly
and interprets to his or her less gifted fellows. In this way a
considerable body of information, more or less accurate in detail, is
collected as to life in the other world. More than that, it is even
possible for men, and especially for women, to go down alive into the
nether world and prosecute their enquiries at first hand among the
ghosts. Women who possess this remarkable faculty transmit it to their
daughters, so that the profession is hereditary. When anybody wishes to
ascertain how it fares with one of his dead kinsfolk in Lamboam, he has
nothing to do but to engage the services of one of these professional
mediums, giving her something which belonged to his departed friend. The
medium rubs her forehead with ginger, muttering an incantation, lies
down on the dead man's property, and falls asleep. Her soul then goes
down in a dream to deadland and elicits from the ghosts the required
information, which on waking from sleep she imparts to the anxious
enquirer.[479]

[Sidenote: Sickness caused by a spirit.]

Sickness accompanied by fainting fits is ascribed to the action of a
spirit, it may be the ghost of a near relation, who has carried off the
"long soul" of the sufferer. The truant soul is recalled by a blast
blown on a triton-shell, in which some chewed ginger or _massoi_ bark
has been inserted. The booming sound attracts the attention of the
vagrant spirit, while the smell of the bark or of the ginger drives away
the ghost.[480]

[Sidenote: Tami lads supposed to be swallowed by a monster at
circumcision; the monster and the bull-roarer are both called _kani_.]

The name which the Tami give to the spirits of the dead is _kani_; but
like other tribes in this part of New Guinea they apply the same term to
the bull-roarer and also to the mythical monster who is supposed to
swallow the lads at circumcision. The identity of the name for the three
things seems to prove that in the mind of the Tami the initiatory rites,
of which circumcision is the principal feature, are closely associated
with their conception of the state of the human soul after death, though
what the precise nature of the association may be still remains obscure.
Like their neighbours on the mainland of New Guinea, the Tami give out
that the novices at initiation are swallowed by a monster or dragon, who
only consents to disgorge his prey in consideration of a tribute of
pigs, th