nt; it is
not of the same nature at all." They believe that the souls of the dead
occasionally visit the living and are seen by them, and that they haunt
houses and burial-places. They are very much afraid of the ghosts and do
all they can to drive or frighten them away. Above all, being cannibals,
they stand in great fear of the ghosts of the people whom they have
killed and eaten. The man who is cutting up a human body takes care to
tie a bandage over his mouth and nose during the operation of carving in
order to prevent the enraged soul of the victim from entering into his
body by these apertures; and for a similar reason the doors of the
houses are shut while the cannibal feast is going on inside. And to keep
the victim's ghost quiet while his body is being devoured, a cut from a
joint is very considerately placed on a tree outside of the house, so
that he may eat of his own flesh and be satisfied. At the conclusion of
the banquet, the people shout, brandish spears, beat the bushes, blow
horns, beat drums, and make all kinds of noises for the purpose of
chasing the ghost or ghosts of the murdered and eaten men away from the
village. But while they send away the souls, they keep the skulls and
jawbones of the victims; as many as thirty-five jawbones have been seen
hanging in a single house in New Ireland. As for the skulls, they are,
or rather were placed on the branch of a dead tree and so preserved on
the beach or near the house of the man who had taken them.[632]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the souls of the dead.]

With regard to the death of their friends they deem it very important to
obtain the bodies and bury them. They offer food to the souls of their
departed kinsfolk for a long time after death, until all the funeral
feasts are over; but they do not hold annual festivals in honour of dead
ancestors. The food offered to the dead is laid every day on a small
platform in a tree; but the natives draw a distinction between offerings
to the soul of a man who died a natural death and offerings to the soul
of a man who was killed in a fight; for whereas they place the former on
a living tree, they deposit the latter on a dead tree. Moreover, they
lay money, weapons, and property, often indeed the whole wealth of the
family, near the corpse of their friend, in order that the soul of the
deceased may carry off the souls of these valuables to the spirit land.
But when the body is carried away to be buried, most of the pr