these two openings the souls of the dead were supposed to go on their
passage to the spirit-world. The souls of chiefs went down the larger of
the openings, and the souls of common people went down the smaller. Near
the spot stood a coco-nut tree, and if a passing soul chanced to collide
with it, the soul could not proceed farther, but returned to its body.
When a man recovered from a deep swoon, his friends supposed that his
soul had been arrested in its progress to the other world by knocking
against the coco-nut tree, and they rejoiced, saying, "He has come back
from the tree of the Watcher," for that was the name by which the
coco-nut tree was known. So firmly did the people of the neighbourhood
believe in the passage of the souls near their houses, that at night
they kept down the blinds to exclude the ghosts.[169] The "jumping-off
stone" at the west end of Upolu was also dreaded on account of the
passing ghosts. The place is a narrow rocky cape. The Samoans were much
astonished when a Christian native boldly built himself a house on the
haunted spot.[170] According to one account, the souls of the dead had
not to make their way through the chain of islands by the slow process
of walking and swimming, but were at once transported to the western end
of Savaii by a band of spirits, who hovered over the house of the dying
man, and catching up his parting spirit conveyed it in a straight
course westward.[171]

[169] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 257 _sq._; S. Ella, _op.
cit._ pp. 643 _sq._; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p.
221.

[170] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, p. 219.

[171] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 257; S. Ella, _op. cit._
p. 643.

The place down which the spirits of the dead were supposed to descend to
the nether world was called by a native name (_Lua[=o]_), which means
"hollow pit." "May you go rumbling down the hollow pit" was a common
form of cursing. At the bottom of the pit was a running stream which
floated the spirits away to Pulotu. All alike, the handsome and the
ugly, old and young, chiefs and commoners, drifted pell-mell on the
current in a dazed, semi-conscious state, till they came to Pulotu.
There they bathed in "the Water of Life" and recovered all their old
life and vigour. Infirmity of every kind fled away; even the aged became
young again. The underworld of Pulotu was conceived on the model of our
upper world. There, as here, were heavens and earth and sea, fruits an