nctuaries of ghosts in Malanta.]

At Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands, all burial-grounds
where common people are interred are so far sacred that no one will go
there without due cause; but places where the remains of nobles repose,
and where sacrifices are offered to their ghosts, are regarded with very
great respect, they may indeed be called family sanctuaries. Some of
them are very old, the powerful ghosts who are worshipped in them being
remote ancestors. It sometimes happens that the man who used to
sacrifice in such a place dies without having instructed his son in the
proper chant of invocation with which the worshipful ghost should be
approached. In such a case the young man who succeeds him may fear to go
to the old sanctuary, lest he should commit a mistake and offend the
ghost; so he will take some ashes from the old sacrificial fire-place
and found a new sanctuary. It is not common in that part of Malanta to
build shrines for the relics of the dead, but it is sometimes done. Such
shrines, on the other hand, are common in the villages of San Cristoval
and in the sacred places of that island where great men lie buried. To
trespass on them would be likely to rouse the anger of the ghosts, some
of whom are known to be of a malignant disposition.[608]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries which are not burial-grounds.]

But burial-grounds are not the only sanctuaries in the Solomon Islands.
There are some where no dead man is known to be interred, though in Dr.
Codrington's opinion there are probably none which do not derive their
sanctity from the presence of a ghost. In the island of Florida the
appearance of something wonderful will cause any place to become a
sanctuary, the wonder being accepted as proof of a ghostly presence. For
example, in the forest near Olevuga a man planted some coco-nut and
almond trees and died not long afterwards. Then there appeared among the
trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The people took it
for granted that the animal was the dead man's ghost, and therefore they
called it by his name. The place became a sanctuary; no one would gather
the coco-nuts and almonds that grew there, till two Christian converts
set the ghost at defiance and appropriated his garden, with the
coco-nuts and almonds. Through the same part of the forest ran a stream
full of eels, one of which was so big that the people were quite sure it
must be a ghost; so nobody would bathe in that str