he highest respect, and has attended to all
religious ceremonies with exactness." One of the attendants then went to
the king and received from him a piece of kava root, which he laid down
on the raised mount before the burial-place (_fytoka_). Several others,
who had pieces of kava root in their bosoms, went up to the grave in
like manner and deposited them there.[175]

[175] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 88 _sq._

Thus the king prayed to the spirit of his dead father at his grave and
made an offering at the tomb. What more could he do to a god at his
temple? And in general we are told that when a great blessing was
desired, or a serious evil deprecated, if the people wished to enjoy
health or beget children, to be successful at sea, or victorious in war,
they would go to the burial grounds of their great chiefs, clean them
up thoroughly, sprinkle the floor with sand, and lay down their
offerings.[176] When Finow the king was dying, his friends carried him
on a bier, not only to the temples of the great gods Tali-y-Toobo and
Tooi-fooa-Bolotoo, where prayers for his recovery were offered; they
bore him also to the grave of a chieftainess and invoked her spirit in
like manner to pity and spare the expiring monarch.[177] Apparently they
thought that the ghost of the chieftainess was quite as able as the
great gods to heal the sick and restore the dying.

[176] Sarah S. Farmer, _Tonga and the Friendly Islands_, p. 127.

[177] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ i. 367.

But on no occasion, perhaps, was the assimilation of dead men to gods
so conspicuous as at the annual offering of first-fruits, which seems to
have been the most impressive of all the yearly rites observed by the
Tongans. The ceremony was observed once a year just before the yams in
general had arrived at a state of maturity; the yams offered at it were
of a kind which admitted of being planted sooner than the others, and
which consequently, ripening earlier, were the first-fruits of the yam
season. The object of the offering was to ensure the protection of the
gods, that their favour might be extended to the welfare of the nation
generally, and in particular to the productions of the earth, of which
in Tonga yams are the most important. At this solemn ceremony the new
yams, slung on poles, were brought from distant islands, carried in
procession to the grave of the late Tooitonga, and deposited in front of
it, their bearers sitting down beside them. T