r dead ancestors. These
they keep in separate rooms of their houses and take with them as
talismans to war. In these inner rooms are also kept miniature wooden
houses in which their ancestors are believed to reside, and in which
even Mohammedans (for some of the natives profess Islam) burn incense on
Fridays in honour of the souls of the dead. These souls are treated like
living beings, for in the morning some finely pounded sago is placed in
the shrines; at noon it is taken away, but may not be eaten by the
inmates of the house. Curiously enough, women are forbidden to set food
for the dead in the shrines: if they did so, it is believed that they
would be childless. Further, in the chief's house there are shrines for
the souls of all the persons who have died in the whole village. Such a
house might almost be described as a temple of the dead. Among the
inhabitants of the Negen Negorijen or "Nine Villages" the abodes of the
ancestral spirits are often merely frameworks of houses decorated with
coloured rags. These frameworks are called _roem seram_. On festal
occasions they are brought forth and the people dance round them to
music. The mountain tribes of these islands to the west of New Guinea
seldom have any such little houses for the souls of the dead. They think
that the spirits of the departed dwell among the branches of trees, to
which accordingly the living attach strips of red and white cotton,
always to the number of seven or a multiple of seven. Also they place
food on the branches or hang it in baskets on the boughs,[505] no doubt
in order to feed the hungry ghosts. But among the tribes on the coast,
who make miniature houses for the use of their dead, these little
shrines form a central feature of the religious life of the people. At
festivals, especially on the occasion of a marriage or a death, the
shrines are brought out from the side chamber and are set down in the
central room of the house, where the people dance round them, singing
and making music for days together with no interruption except for
meals.[506]

[Sidenote: Wooden images of the dead.]

According to the Dutch writer, Mr. de Clercq, whose account I am
reproducing, this worship of the dead, represented by wooden images
(_karwar_) and lodged in miniature houses, is, together with a belief in
good and bad spirits, the only thing deserving the name of religion that
can be detected among these people. It is certain that the wooden images
repr