uls being supposed to pass at death
into their totem animals or plants.[179] We have seen that the Samoan
system of family, village, and district gods bears strong marks of
having been developed out of totemism; and if their totemism had in turn
been developed out of a doctrine of transmigration, we should expect to
find among them a belief that the souls of the dead appeared in the
shape of the animals, plants, or other natural objects which were
regarded as the embodiments of their family, village, or district gods.
But of such a belief there is seemingly no trace. It appears, therefore,
unlikely that Samoan totemism was based on a doctrine of transmigration.
Similarly we have seen reason to think that the Tongan worship of
animals may have sprung from totemism, though according to the best
authorities that worship was not connected with a theory of
metempsychosis.[180] Taken together, the Samoan and the Tongan systems
seem to show that, if totemism ever flourished among the Polynesians, it
had not its roots in a worship of the dead.

[178] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 221,
"They had no belief in the transmigration of souls either into
animals, inert bodies, or into different human bodies."

[179] W. H. R. Rivers, _The History of Melanesian
Society_, ii. 358 _sqq._

[180] See above, pp. 92 _sqq._

CHAPTER IV

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE HERVEY ISLANDERS

Sec. 1. _The Hervey or Cook Islands_

The Hervey or Cook Archipelago is a scattered group of nine small
islands situated in the South Pacific about seven hundred miles
south-east of Samoa. The islands are either volcanic or coralline, and
approach to them is impeded by dangerous reefs and the absence of
harbours.[1] The two principal islands are Rarotonga and Mangaia, the
most southerly of the group. Of these the larger, Rarotonga, has a
circumference of about thirty miles. It is a vast mass of volcanic
mountains, rising peak above peak, to a height of between four and five
thousand feet above the sea; but from the foot of the mountains a
stretch of flat land, covered with rich alluvial soil, extends for one
or two miles to the coast, which is formed by a fringing reef of live
coral. The whole island is mantled in luxuriant tropical verdure. It is
difficult, we are told, to exaggerate the strange forms of beauty which
everywhere meet the eye in this lovely island: gigantic and fantastic
columns of rock dr