by a Dutch writer: "When any one is sick and
wishes to know the means of cure, or when any one desires to avert
misfortune or to discover something unknown, then in presence of the
whole family one of the members is stupefied by the fumes of incense or
by other means of producing a state of trance. The image of the deceased
person whose advice is sought is then placed on the lap or shoulder of
the medium in order to cause the soul to pass out of the image into his
body. At the moment when that happens, he begins to shiver; and,
encouraged by the bystanders, the soul speaks through the mouth of the
medium and names the means of cure or of averting the calamity. When he
comes to himself, the medium knows nothing of what he has been saying.
This they call _kor karwar_, that is, 'invoking the soul;' and they say
_karwar iwos_, 'the soul speaks.'" The writer adds: "It is sometimes
reported that the souls go to the underworld, but that is not true. The
Papuans think that after death the soul abides by the corpse and is
buried with it in the grave; hence before an image is made, if it is
necessary to consult the soul, the enquirer must betake himself to the
grave in order to do so. But when the image is made, the soul enters
into it and is supposed to remain in it so long as satisfactory answers
are obtained from it in consultation. But should the answers prove
disappointing, the people think that the soul has deserted the image, on
which they throw the image away as useless. Where the soul has gone,
nobody knows, and they do not trouble their heads about it, since it has
lost its power."[489] The person who acts as medium in consulting the
spirit may be either the house-father himself or a magician
(_konoor_).[490]

[Sidenote: Example of the consultation of an ancestral image.]

As an example of these consultations we may take the case of a man who
was suffering from a painful sore on his finger and wished to ascertain
the cause of the trouble. So he set one of the ancestral images before
him and questioned it closely. At first the image made no reply; but at
last the man remembered that he had neglected his duty to his dead
brother by failing to marry his widow, as, according to native custom,
he should have done. Now the natives believe that the dead can punish
them for any breach of customary law; so it occurred to our enquirer
that the ghost of his dead brother might have afflicted him with the
sore on his finger for no