g as
the deceased was a male or a female. All the time that the artist is at
work, the rest of the company chant a melancholy dirge. When the nose
and ears are finished and have been attached to the skull, and small
round fruits have been inserted in the hollow sockets of the eyes to
represent the missing orbs, a banquet follows in honour of the deceased,
who is now represented by his decorated skull set up on a block of wood
on the table. Thus he receives his share of the food and of the cigars,
and is raised to the rank of a domestic idol or _korwar_. Henceforth the
skull is carefully kept in a corner of the chamber to be consulted as an
oracle in time of need. The bodies of fathers and mothers are treated in
the same way as those of firstborn children. On the other hand the
bodies of children who die under the age of two years are never buried.
The remains are packed in baskets of rushes covered with lids and
tightly corded, and the baskets are then hung on the branches of tall
trees, where no more notice is taken of them. Four or five such baskets
containing the mouldering bodies of infants may sometimes be seen
hanging on a single tree.[498] The reason for thus disposing of the
remains of young children is said to be as follows. A thick mist hangs
at evening over the top of the dense tropical forest, and in the mist
dwell two spirits called Narwur and Imgier, one male and the other
female, who kill little children, not out of malice but out of love,
because they wish to have the children with them. So when a child dies,
the parents fasten its little body to the branches of a tall tree in the
forest, hoping that the spirit pair will take it and be satisfied, and
will spare its small brothers and sisters.[499]

[Sidenote: Mummification of the dead.]

In some parts of Geelvink Bay, however, the bodies of the dead are
treated differently. For example, on the south coast of the island of
Jobi or Jappen and elsewhere the corpses are reduced to mummies by being
dried on a bamboo stage over a slow fire; after which the mummies, wrapt
in cloth, are kept in the house, being either laid along the wall or
hung from the ceiling. When the number of these relics begins to
incommode the living inmates of the house, the older mummies are removed
and deposited in the hollow trunks of ancient trees. In some tribes who
thus mummify their dead the juices of corruption which drip from the
rotting corpse are caught in a vessel and given