which they
had officiated. A pile of stones or a circle of high poles marked their
grave. But it was only the bodies of priests or of persons of some
importance that were thus interred. For ordinary people natural graves
were preferred, where suitable places could be found, such as caves in
the face of cliffs or large subterranean grottos. Sometimes the
inhabitants of a village deposited their dead in one great cavern, but
generally each family had a distinct sepulchral cave. Their artificial
graves were either simple pits dug in the earth or large enclosures,
which might be surrounded with high stone walls so as to resemble the
ordinary temples (_heiaus_). Occasionally they buried their dead in
sequestered spots near their dwellings, but often in their gardens, and
sometimes in their houses. The graves were not deep, and the bodies were
usually placed in them in a sitting posture.[130] A rude method of
embalming by means of the flower of the sugar-cane was often practised,
whereby the entrails and brains were extracted and the body
desiccated.[131] When the dead was interred in the dwelling, the house
was not uncommonly shut up and deserted, the survivors seeking for
themselves a new habitation.[132] The custom no doubt sprang from a fear
of the ghosts, which were supposed to linger about their final
resting-places and to injure such as came within their reach; hence
their apparitions were much dreaded. For the same reason burials were
conducted in a private manner and by night. If people were seen carrying
a dead body past a house, the inmates would abuse or even stone them for
not taking it some other way; for they imagined that the ghost would ply
to and fro between the grave and his old home along the path by which
his corpse had been carried.[133] Sometimes, apparently, to prevent the
ghost from straying, his grave was enclosed by a sort of fence composed
of long poles stuck in the ground at intervals of three or four inches
and fastened together at the top. At all events Ellis saw a priest's
tomb thus enclosed, and he received this explanation of the fence from
some people; though others merely said that it was a custom so to inter
persons of consequence.[134] Nightmare was believed to be caused by a
ghost attempting to strangle the dreamer; under the influence of this
belief a strong man has been seen to run shrieking down the street,
tugging with both hands at his throat to tear the incubus away, till he
reache