no
return. Sometimes, however, the guardian god of a family would oppose
the passage of a soul to the other world, and send it back to life, so
that the seemingly dead man recovered.[164] It is said to have been a
firmly established belief that the dead appeared to the living and
communicated with them in dreams.[165] The priests in particular were
favoured with such messages from the other world.[166]

[164] A. Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 266.

[165] L. de Freycinet, _Voyage autour du Monde, Historique_, ii.
594.

[166] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iv. 367.

A legend tells how a certain chief of Hawaii, sorrowing for the death of
his wife, applied to a priest, who furnished him with a god called
Kane-i-kou-alii (God of Chiefs), to guide him to the nether world of
Milu, whither his beloved spouse had departed. Journeying together, the
god and the man came to the end of the world, where grew a tree, which
split open and allowed them to glide down into the depths. There the god
hid behind a rock and allowed the chief to go on alone, but first he
rubbed stinking oil over the chief's body. On arriving at Milu's palace
the chief found the whole court full of spirits engaged in such noisy
and tumultuous sports, that he could steal in among them unobserved, all
the more because the nearest spirits mistook him for a ghost newly
arrived with the stench of his dead body still on him, so that they
turned away from him in disgust and made uncomplimentary remarks on his
unsavoury condition. When they had played all sorts of games, the chief
suggested that, as a new form of sport, they should all take out their
eyes and throw them in a heap. The suggestion was accepted, and every
one hastened to comply with it. But the chief took care to mark where
the eyes of Milu fell, and snatching them up he hid them in the coco-nut
beaker which he carried with him. As all the spirits were now blind, it
was easy for the chief to make his way to the neighbouring realm of Akea
or Wakea, which was tabooed to the spirits that swarmed in Milu's
kingdom and might not be entered by them. However, after long
negotiations, Milu was allowed to recover his eyes, on condition that
the soul of the chief's wife should be sent back to earth and reunited
to her body, which was happily accomplished.[167]

[167] A. Bastian, _Inselgruppen in Oceanien_, pp. 265 _sq._

The Hawaiians were not without some notion of a general resurrection of