do not seem to take much interest in the strange
cult so highly developed here; so that, for want of something better,
my own observations may be acceptable.

The pig-cult, or "Suque," is found almost all over Melanesia. It
is most highly developed in the Banks Islands and the Central New
Hebrides, and rules the entire life of the natives; yet it forms
only a part of their religion, and probably a newer part, while the
fundamental principle is ancestor-worship. We must not expect to find
in the native mind clear conceptions of transcendental things. The
religious ceremonies differ in adjoining villages, and so do the ideas
concerning the other world. There is no regular dogma; and since even
the conceptions of religions with well-defined dogmas are constantly
changing, religions which are handed down by oral tradition only,
and in the vaguest way, must necessarily be fluctuating. Following
the natural laws of thought, religious conceptions split into numerous
local varieties, and it is the task of the scientist to seek, amid this
variety of exterior forms, the common underlying idea, long forgotten
by everyone else, and to ascertain what it was in its original purity,
without additions and deformations.

My observations led me to the following results: according to native
belief, the soul leaves the body after death, and wanders about near
by. Apparently the idea is that it remains in connection with the body
for a certain time, for in some districts the corpse is fed for five
days or longer; in Vao a bamboo tube is used, which leads from the
surface of the earth to the mouth of the buried body. The souls of
low-caste people soon disappear, but the higher the caste, the longer
the soul stays on earth. Still, the natives have some conception of
a paradise in which the soul of the high-caste finds all bliss and
delight, and which the soul ultimately enters. This idea may have
come up since the arrival of Christianity. It is customary to hold
a death-feast for a man of no caste after five days, for a low-caste
after one hundred, and for a high-caste after three hundred or even
one thousand days. The soul remains in contact with the world of
the living, and may be perceived as a good or bad spirit of as much
power as the man had when alive. To obtain the favour and assistance
of these spirits seems to be the fundamental idea, the main object of
religion in the New Hebrides. The spirit of an ancestor will naturally
favour