y handle the corpse. After they have discharged their
office they must remain near the corpse for four or five days, observing
a rigorous fast and keeping apart from their wives. They may not shave
or cut their hair, and they are obliged to wear a tall pyramidal and
very cumbersome head-dress. They may not touch food with their hands. If
they help themselves to it, they must pick it up with their mouths alone
or with a stick, not with their fingers. Oftener they are fed by an
attendant, who puts the victuals into their mouths as he might do if
they were palsied. On the other hand they are treated by the people with
great respect; common folk will not pass near them without
stooping.[523]

[Sidenote: Sham fight as a mourning ceremony.]

A curious ceremony which the New Caledonians observe at a certain period
of mourning for the dead is a sham fight. Father Lambert describes one
such combat which he witnessed. A number of men were divided into two
parties; one party was posted on the beach, the other and much larger
party was stationed in the adjoining cemetery, where food and property
had been collected. From time to time a long piercing yell would be
heard; then a number of men would break from the crowd in the cemetery
and rush furiously down to the beach with their slings and stones ready
to assail their adversaries. These, answering yell with yell, would then
plunge into the sea, armed with battle-axes and clubs, while they made a
feint of parrying the stones hurled at them by the other side. But
neither the shots nor the parries appeared to be very seriously meant.
Then when the assailants retired, the fugitives pretended to pursue
them, till both parties had regained their original position. The same
scene of alternate attack and retreat was repeated hour after hour, till
at last, the pretence of enmity being laid aside, the two parties joined
in a dance, their heads crowned with leafy garlands. Father Lambert, who
describes this ceremony as an eye-witness, offers no explanation of it.
But as he tells us that all deaths are believed by these savages to be
an effect of sorcery, we may conjecture that the sham fight is intended
to delude the ghost into thinking that his death is being avenged on the
sorcerer who killed him.[524] In former lectures I shewed that similar
pretences are made, apparently for a similar purpose, by some of the
natives of Australia and New Guinea.[525] If the explanation is correct,
we can