on the valuable information which we owe
to the Catholic missionary Father Lambert. But, as I pointed out, his
evidence refers not so much to the natives of the mainland as to the
inhabitants of certain small islands at the two extremities of the great
island. It may be well, therefore, to supplement his description by some
notes which a distinguished Protestant missionary, the Rev. Dr. George
Turner, obtained in the year 1845 from two native teachers, one a Samoan
and the other a Rarotongan, who lived in the south-south-eastern part of
New Caledonia for three years.[545] Their evidence, it will be observed,
goes to confirm Father Lambert's view as to the general similarity of
the religious beliefs and customs prevailing throughout the island.

[Sidenote: Material culture of the New Caledonians.]

The natives of this part of New Caledonia were divided into separate
districts, each with its own name, and war, perpetual war, was the rule
between the neighbouring communities. They cultivated taro, yams,
coco-nuts, and sugar-cane; but they had no intoxicating _kava_ and kept
no pigs. They cooked their food in earthenware pots manufactured by the
women. In former days their only edge-tools were made of stone, and they
felled trees by a slow fire smouldering close to the ground. Similarly
they hollowed out the fallen trees by means of a slow fire to make their
canoes. Their villages were not permanent. They migrated within certain
bounds, as they planted. A village might comprise as many as fifty or
sixty round houses. The chiefs had absolute power of life and death.
Priests did not meddle in political affairs.[546]

[Sidenote: Burial customs; preservation of the skulls and teeth.]

At death they dressed the corpse with a belt and shell armlets, cut off
the nails of the fingers and toes, and kept them as relics. They spread
the grave with a mat, and buried all the body but the head. After ten
days the friends twisted off the head, extracted the teeth to be kept as
relics, and preserved the skull also. In cases of sickness and other
calamities they presented offerings of food to the skulls of the dead.
The teeth of the old women were taken to the yam plantations and were
supposed to fertilise them; and their skulls were set up on poles in the
plantations for the same purpose. When they buried a chief, they erected
spears at his head, fastened a spear-thrower to his forefinger, and laid
a club on the top of his grave,[547] no