e the sacrificer calls out the name of the
particular ghost whom he desires to summon to the feast.[597]

[Sidenote: Vicarious sacrifices for the sick.]

Vicarious sacrifices for the sick are offered in San Cristoval to a
certain malignant ghost called Tapia, who is believed to seize a man's
soul and tie it up to a banyan tree. When that has happened, a man who
knows how to manage Tapia intercedes with him. He takes a pig or fish to
the sacred place and offers it to the grim ghost, saying, "This is for
you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don't kill him." With that he
can loose the captive soul and take it back to the sick man, who
thereupon recovers.[598]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz. The dead represented by a
stock.]

In Santa Cruz the sacrifices offered to ghosts are very economical; for
if the offering is of food, the living eat it up after a decent
interval; if it is a valuable, they remove it and resume the use of it
themselves. The principle of this spiritual economy probably lies in the
common belief that ghosts, being immaterial, absorb the immaterial
essence of the objects, leaving the material substance to be enjoyed by
men. When a man of mark dies in Santa Cruz, his relations set up a stock
of wood in his house to represent him. This is renewed from time to
time, till after a while the man is forgotten or thrown into the shade
by the attractions of some newer ghost, so that the old stock is
neglected. But when the stock is first put up, a pig is killed and two
strips of flesh from the back bone are set before the stock as food for
the ghost, but only to be soon taken away and eaten by the living.
Similar offerings may be repeated from time to time, as when the stock
is renewed. Again, when a garden is planted, they spread feather-money
and red native cloth round it for the use of the ghost; but his
enjoyment of these riches is brief and precarious.[599]

[Sidenote: Native account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz.]

To supplement the foregoing account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa
Cruz, I will add a description of some of them which was given by a
native of Santa Cruz in his own language and translated for us by a
missionary. It runs thus: "When anyone begins to fall sick he seeks a
doctor (_meduka_), and when the doctor comes near the sick man he
stiffens his body, and all those in the house think a ghost has entered
into the doctor, and they are all very quiet. Some doc