e gods or by the incantations of "the praying people" or
sorcerers.[38] Hence, when a person fell ill, it was customary to
consult a priest in order to discover the nature of the sin which had
drawn down on the sufferer the wrath of the deity or the enmity of the
sorcerer.[39] But besides its final departure at death, the soul was
thought to quit the body temporarily on other occasions. In sleep it was
supposed to leave the sleeper and travel over the island, holding
converse with the dead, and even visiting the spirit-world. It was thus
that the islanders, like so many other savages, explained the phenomena
of dreams. We are told that some of the most important events in their
national history were determined by dreams.[40] Again, they explained
sneezing as the return of the soul to the body after a temporary
absence. Hence in Rarotonga, when a person sneezes, the bystanders
exclaim, as though addressing his spirit, "Ha! you have come back!"[41]

[38] W. W. Gill, "Mangaia (Hervey Islands)," _op. cit._ p. 342.
Compare _id._, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p. 35.

[39] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p.
35; _id._, "Mangaia (Hervey Islands)," _op. cit._ p. 339; _id._,
_Life in the Southern Isles_, p. 70.

[40] W. W. Gill, "Mangaia (Hervey Islands)," _op. cit._ p. 347.

[41] W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, p.
177.

How exactly the Hervey Islanders pictured to themselves the nature of
the human soul, appears not to be recorded. Probably their notions on
this obscure subject did not differ greatly from those of the natives of
Pukapuka or Danger Island, a lonely island situated some hundreds of
miles to the north-west of the Hervey Group. These savages apparently
conceived the soul as a small material substance that varied in size
with the dimensions of the body which it inhabited. For the sacred men
or sorcerers of that island used to set traps to catch the souls of
people, and the traps consisted of loops of coco-nut fibre, which
differed in size according as the soul to be caught in one of them was
fat or thin, or perhaps according as it was the soul of a child or that
of an adult. Two of these soul-traps were presented to Mr. W. W. Gill,
the first white missionary to land in Danger Island. The loops or rings
were arranged in pairs on each side of two cords, one of which was
twenty-eight feet long and the other fourteen. The mode of