ittle in the various islands. In the Solomon
Islands, for instance, when an expedition has started in a fleet of
canoes, there is sometimes a hesitation whether they shall proceed, or a
doubt as to what direction they should take. Thereupon a diviner may
declare that he has felt a ghost step on board; for did not the canoe
tip over to the one side? Accordingly he asks the invisible passenger,
"Shall we go on? Shall we go to such and such a place?" If the canoe
rocks, the answer is yes; if it lies on an even keel, the answer is no.
Again, when a man is sick and his friends wish to know what ghost is
vexing or, as they say, eating him, a diviner or wizard is sent for. He
comes bringing an assistant, and the two sit down, the wizard in front
and the assistant at his back, and they hold a stick or bamboo by the
two ends. The wizard then begins to slap the end of the bamboo he holds,
calling out one after another the names of men not very long deceased,
and when he names the one who is afflicting the sick man the stick of
itself becomes violently agitated.[624] We are not informed, but we may
probably assume, that it is the ghost and not the man who really
agitates the stick. A somewhat different mode of divination was
occasionally employed at Motlav in the Banks' Islands in order to
discover a thief or other criminal. After a burial they would take a
bag, put some Tahitian chestnut and scraped banana into it, and tie it
to the end of a hollow bamboo tube about ten feet long in such a way
that the end of the tube was inserted in the mouth of the bag. Then the
bag was laid on the dead man's grave, and the diviners grasped the other
end of the bamboo. The names of the recently dead were then called over,
and while this was being done the men felt the bamboo grow heavy in
their hands, for a ghost was scrambling up from the bag into the hollow
of the bamboo. Having thus secured him they carried the imprisoned ghost
in the bamboo into the village, where the roll of the recent dead was
again called over in order to learn whose ghost had been caught in the
trap. When wrong names were mentioned, the free end of the bamboo moved
from side to side, but at the mention of the right name it revolved
briskly. Having thus ascertained whom they had to deal with, they
questioned the entrapped ghost, "Who stole so and so? Who was guilty in
such a case?" Thereupon the bamboo, moved no doubt by the ghost inside,
pointed at the culprit, if he was