mourning costume of mats and leaves, see also Captain James
Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_, p.
240; W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 380, 392, 431, ii. 214
_sq._

[205] Captain James Cook, _Voyages_ v. 420.

[206] Jerome Grange, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_,
xvii. (1845) p. 13.

[207] Captain James Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern
Pacific Ocean_, pp. 242-244.

Similar scenes were witnessed some years later by Mariner at the death
and burial of Finow, another king of Tonga; and the Englishman has
described from personal observation how on this occasion the mourners
cut and wounded their heads and bodies with clubs, stones, knives, or
sharp shells. This they did on one or other of the _malais_[208] or
ceremonial grounds in the presence of many spectators, vying apparently
with each other in the effort to surpass the rest in this public
manifestation of their sorrow for the death of the king and their
respect for his memory. As one ran out into the middle of the ground he
would cry, "Finow! I know well your mind; you have departed to Bolotoo,
and left your people under suspicion that I, or some of those about you,
were unfaithful; but where is the proof of infidelity? where is a single
instance of disrespect?" Then, inflicting violent blows and deep cuts on
his head with a club, stone, or knife, he would again exclaim at
intervals, "Is this not a proof of my fidelity? does this not evince
loyalty and attachment to the memory of the departed warrior?" Some more
violent than others cut their heads to the skull with such heavy and
repeated blows that they reeled and lost their reason for a time.[209]
The king's successor, Finow the Second, not content with the usual
instruments of torture, employed a saw for the purpose, striking his
skull with the teeth so violently that he staggered for loss of blood;
but this he did, not at the time of the burial and in presence of the
multitude, but some weeks later at a more private ceremony of mourning
before the grave.[210] At the public ceremony the late king's fishermen
varied the usual breaking of heads and slashing of bodies by a peculiar
form of self-torment. Instead of clubs they appropriately carried the
paddles of canoes, with which they battered their heads in the orthodox
style; but besides every man of them had three arrows stuck through each
cheek in a slanting direction, so that, while th