operty is
removed by its owners for their own use. However, the relations will
sometimes detach a few shells from the coils of shell money and a few
beads from a necklace and drop them in a fire for the behoof of the
ghost. But when the deceased was a chief or other person of importance,
some of his property would be buried with him. And before burial his
body would be propped up on a special chair in front of his house,
adorned with necklaces, wreaths of flowers and feathers, and gaudy with
war-paint. In one hand would be placed a large cooked yam, and in the
other a spear, while a club would be put on his shoulder. The yam was to
stay the pangs of hunger on his long journey, and the weapons were to
enable him to fight the foes who might resist his entrance into the
spirit land. In the Duke of York Island the corpse was usually disposed
of by being sunk in a deep part of the lagoon; but sometimes it was
buried in the house and a fire kept burning on the spot.[633]

[Sidenote: Burial customs in New Ireland and New Britain. Preservation
of the skull.]

In New Ireland the dead were rolled up in winding-sheets made of
pandanus leaves, then weighted with stones and buried at sea. However,
at some places they were deposited in deep underground watercourses or
caverns. Towards the northern end of New Ireland corpses were burned on
large piles of firewood in an open space of the village. A number of
images curiously carved out of wood or chalk were set round the blazing
pyre, but the meaning of these strange figures is uncertain. Men and
women uttered the most piteous wailings, threw themselves on the top of
the corpse, and pulled at the arms and legs. This they did not merely to
express their grief, but because they thought that if they saw and
handled the dead body while it was burning, the ghost could not or would
not haunt them afterwards.[634] Amongst the natives of the Gazelle
Peninsula in New Britain the dead are generally buried in shallow graves
in or near their houses. Some of the shell money which belonged to a man
in life is buried with him. Women with blackened bodies sleep on the
grave for weeks.[635] When the deceased was a great chief, his corpse,
almost covered with shell money, is placed in a canoe, which is
deposited in a small house. Thereupon the nearest female relations are
led into the house, and the door being walled up they are obliged to
remain there with the rotting body until all the flesh has moul