cant name of "foul-scented Rohutu"; but over
the nature of the substances which earned for it this unsavoury
appellation our missionary authority preferred to draw a veil.[240]

[238] See above, p. 317.

[239] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 245 _sq._, 397; J. A. Moerenhout,
_op. cit._ i. 434 _sq._

[240] J. Williams, _Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the
South Sea Islands_, p. 476.

According to one account, the souls of the dead were supposed to gather
in the sun, where they feasted with the god Maouwe or O-Mauwee (Maui) on
bread-fruit and the flesh of pigs or dogs, and drank never-ending
draughts of kava.[241]

[241] J. R. Forster, _Observations made during a Voyage round
the World_, p. 553; G. Forster, _Voyage round the World_, ii.
151.

But wherever the souls of the dead were imagined to dwell, we may infer
that they were credited with the power of returning to earth for a
longer or shorter time to benefit or injure the living. For we have seen
that sickness and death were commonly ascribed to the action of these
spirits,[242] which seems to imply that they revisited this sublunary
world on their errands of mischief. Accordingly, whenever the natives
approached by night one of the charnel-houses in which dead bodies were
exposed, they were startled "in the same manner that many of our
ignorant and superstitious people are with the apprehension of ghosts,
and at the sight of a churchyard." Again, the souls of the departed were
sometimes thought to communicate with their friends in dreams and to
announce to them things that should afterwards come to pass, thus
enabling the dreamer to foretell the future. Foreknowledge thus
acquired, however, was confined to particular persons, and such favoured
dreamers enjoyed a reputation little inferior to that of the inspired
priests. One of them prophesied to Captain Cook on the strength of a
communication vouchsafed to him by the soul of his deceased father in a
dream; but the event proved that the ghost was out in his reckoning by
five days.[243]

[242] See above, pp. 299 _sqq._

[243] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 152.

The fear of ghosts in the minds of the Society Islanders has long
survived their conversion to Christianity; indeed, we are informed that
it is as rampant as ever. No ordinary native would dare to visit one of
the lonely caves where the mouldering bones or skulls of his forefathers
were deposited for safety in days o