d the door of a neighbour's house and, bursting in, fell fainting
on the floor. He thought that the ghost of a chief, who had died the day
before, had a grip on his throat and was trying to throttle him.[135]
Sometimes, however, affection for the dead sufficed to overcome the fear
of the ghost, and the mouldering bones were carried about as relics by
relations and friends.[136] When the Scotch sailor Archibald Campbell
was in the islands in the early years of the nineteenth century, his
patroness the queen kept by her the bones of her father wrapt up in a
piece of cloth. Whenever she slept in her own house, the bones were
placed by her side; in her absence they were set on a feather-bed which
she had received from the captain of a ship, and which she used only for
this purpose. On being asked by the Scotchman why she observed this
singular custom, she replied that it was because she loved her father so
dearly.[137] More usually, however, the bones of a beloved chief were
carefully hidden to prevent his enemies from finding them and making
arrow-heads out of them, with which to hunt rats, or otherwise profaning
them. Hence there was a proverb to the effect that the bones of bad
chiefs were not concealed. When the great King Kamehameha died in 1819,
his bones were hidden and disappeared completely in some secret
cave.[138]

[130] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 359 _sq._; J. J. Jarves, _op.
cit._ pp. 73 _sq._

[131] J. J. Jarves, _op. cit._ p. 73; J. Remy, _op. cit._ p.
xlvii.

[132] Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 429.

[133] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 360 _sq._; J. J. Jarves, _op.
cit._ p. 74; A. Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inslen_, p. 109.

[134] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iv. 129.

[135] H. T. Cheever, _Life in the Sandwich Islands_ (London,
1851), pp. 11 _sq._, quoting Sheldon Dibble, _History of the
Sandwich Islands_, p. 99.

[136] O. von Kotzebue, _Neue Reise um die Welt_, ii. 98; A.
Bastian, _Inselgruppen in Oceanien_, p. 261.

[137] A. Campbell, _Voyage round the World_, pp. 206 _sq._

[138] J. Remy, _op. cit._ p. 153.

The death of a king or great chief in former days was the occasion for
the observance of some singular ceremonies and customs. The grief, real
or pretended, of the people found expression in many extravagant forms.
Men and women knocked out some of their front teeth with stones; but the
custom seems to have been observed even more extensivel