h the body they
deposited in the grave several things which had been used by the
deceased during his illness, such as his clothing, his drinking-cup, and
his bamboo pillow. The wooden pickaxes and coco-nut shells employed as
shovels in digging the grave were also carefully buried with the corpse.
It was not, we are told, because the people believed these things to be
of use to the dead; but because it was supposed that, if they were left
and handled by others, further disease and death would be the
consequence. Valuable mats and other articles of property were sometimes
buried with the corpse, and the grave of a warrior was surrounded with
spears stuck upright in the ground. Graves were sometimes enclosed with
stones and strewn with sand or crumbled coral.[159]

[159] W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp.
150 _sq._; G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 146 _sq._; S. Ella, _op.
cit._ pp. 640 _sq._; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 179 _sq._,
182 _sq._; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 403.

The obsequies of a chief of high rank were more elaborate. The body was
kept unburied for days until his clansfolk had assembled from various
parts of the islands and paraded the body, shoulder high, through the
village, chanting a melancholy dirge.[160] The mourning and ceremonies
lasted from ten to fifteen days. All that time the house of death was
watched night and day by men appointed for the purpose. After the
burial, and until the days of mourning were ended, the daytime was
generally spent in boxing and wrestling matches, and sham-fights, while
the nights were occupied with dancing and practising a kind of
buffoonery, which was customary at these seasons of mourning for the
dead. The performance was called _O le tau-pinga_. The performers amused
themselves by making a variety of ludicrous faces and grimaces at each
other, to see who could excite the other to laugh first. Thus they
whiled away the hours of night till the days of mourning were
expired.[161] So long as the funeral ceremonies and feasts lasted no
work might be done in the village, and no strangers might approach it.
The neighbouring lagoon and reefs were taboo: no canoe might pass over
the lagoon anywhere near the village, and no man might fish in it or on
the reef.[162] For a chief or man of distinction fires were kept burning
day and night in a line from the house to the grave; these fires were
maintained for ten days after the funeral. The