sually clothed or covered with cloth,
and for a long time it was carefully rubbed with aromatic oils once a
day. The size of these charnel-houses varied with the rank of the
persons whose bodies they contained; the better sort were enclosed by
railings. Those which were allotted to people of the lower class just
sufficed to cover the bier, and were not railed in. The largest seen by
Captain Cook was eleven yards long. Such houses were ornamented
according to the taste and abilities of the surviving kindred, who never
failed to lay a profusion of good cloth about the body, and sometimes
almost covered the outside of the house.[204]

[204] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 93 _sq._, 135, 217, 218; J. Wilson,
_op. cit._ pp. 84, 212 _sq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 404; J. A.
Moerenhout, _op. cit._ i. 547.

But before the corpse was deposited in one of these temporary
structures, it was shrouded in cloth and carried on a bier to the
sea-shore, where it was set down on the beach at the water's edge. There
a priest, who accompanied the procession, renewed the prayers which he
had offered over the body both at the house and on its passage to the
shore. Further, he took up water in his hands and sprinkled it towards
the corpse, but not upon it. These prayers and sprinklings he repeated
several times, and between the repetitions the body was carried back
some forty or fifty yards from the sea, only to be brought back again to
the water's edge. While these ceremonies were being performed, the
temporary house or shed was being prepared, in which the corpse was to
remain until the flesh had wholly wasted from the bones. Thither it was
then carried from the beach and laid upon the bier.[205]

[205] J. Cook, _op. cit._ i. 217 _sq._ Compare J. R. Forster,
_Observations made during a Voyage round the World_, p. 559.

The practice of embalming appears to have been long familiar to the
natives of the Society Islands. The methods employed by them were
simple. Sometimes the juices were merely squeezed out of the corpse,
which was then exposed to the sun and anointed with fragrant oils. At
other times, and apparently more usually, the bowels, entrails, and
brains were extracted, and the cavities filled with cloth soaked in
perfumed oils, which were also injected into other parts of the body.
Scented oils were also rubbed over the outside daily: every day the
corpse was exposed to the sun in a sitting posture: every night it was
l