[561] It is
interesting and instructive to find that in this part of the world
sea-demons, who might be thought to be pure spirits of nature, are in
fact ghosts of the dead.

[Sidenote: Burnt offerings in honour of the dead.]

In the island of Florida, two days after the death of a chief or of any
person who was much esteemed, the relatives and friends assemble and
hold a funeral feast, at which they throw a bit of food into the fire
for the ghost, saying, "This is for you."[562] In other of the Solomon
Islands morsels of food are similarly thrown on the fire at the
death-feasts as the dead man's share.[563] Thus, in the Shortlands
Islands, when a famous chief named Gorai died, his body was burnt and
his relatives cast food, beads, and other property into the fire. The
dead chief had been very fond of tea, so one of his daughters threw a
cup of tea into the flames. Women danced a funeral dance round the pyre
till the body was consumed.[564] Why should the dead man's food and
property be burnt? No explanation of the practice is given by our
authorities, so we are left to conjecture the reason of it. Is it that
by volatilising the solid substance of the food you make it more
accessible to the thin unsubstantial nature of the ghost? Is it that you
destroy the property of the ghost lest he should come back in person to
fetch it and so haunt and trouble the survivors? Is it that the spirits
of the dead are supposed to reside in the fire on the hearth, so that
offerings cast into the flames are transmitted to them directly? Whether
it is with any such ideas that the Solomon Islanders throw food into the
fire for ghosts, I cannot say. The whole question of the meaning of
burnt sacrifice is still to a great extent obscure.

[Sidenote: Funeral customs in the island of Florida. The ghostly ferry.]

At the funeral feast of a chief in the island of Florida the axes,
spears, shield and other belongings of the deceased are hung up with
great lamentations in his house; everything remains afterwards untouched
and the house falls into ruins, which as time goes on are thickly
mantled with the long tendrils of the sprouting yams. But we are told
that the weapons are not intended to accompany the ghost to the land of
souls; they are hung up only as a memorial of a great and valued man.
"With the same feeling they cut down a dead man's fruit-trees as a mark
of respect and affection, not with any notion of these things serving
him in the