conversation the cause of the sickness, which
usually consisted in some breach of taboo, such as a theft of
bread-fruit or coco-nuts from a sacred tree. At the same time the
affable spirit would reveal to the physician the penalty which the sick
man must pay in order to expiate his crime and thereby ensure his
recovery. A sacrifice of pigs would appear to have been usually deemed
indispensable for the patient's complete convalescence; the animals were
conveyed to a temple and there consumed by the priests for the benefit
of the sufferer.[80] The _tauas_ or high priests were supposed to become
gods after death; when one of them departed this life, it was essential
for his deification that human victims should be sacrificed. The number
of victims varied with the rank of the new deity; it was never less than
seven, but oftener ten. Each victim was sacrificed for the sake of a
particular part of the deity's body, as for his head, or his eyes, or
his hair. To procure the necessary tale of victims, predatory
expeditions were undertaken against the tribes in neighbouring
valleys.[81]

[79] C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._ i. 245 _sq._; Vincendon-Dumoulin
et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ pp. 227 _sq._

[80] Langsdorff, _op. cit._ i. 136. The writer's language seems
to imply that the spirit whom the priestly physician caught in
his hands and interrogated was the patient's own soul.

[81] Mathias G----, _op. cit._ p. 45; C. S. Stewart, _op. cit._
i. 247; Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Desgraz, _op. cit._ pp. 228
_sq._

Sec. 8. _The Soul, Death, and Funeral Customs_

Like most savages, the Marquesans thought that they possessed souls
which could quit their bodies and wander far away in dreams. Thus a
young girl once related how, the night before, she had sailed in a
splendid canoe to Tiburones, a mythical paradise to the west of
Nukahiva; there she had seen beautiful things such as do not exist here
on earth. "There," said she, "the trees are very tall, and the people
very handsome; there they sing songs to music sweeter than ours. Ah!
when shall I be able to return to Tiburones?" On another occasion a
woman's soul appeared to a priest to inform him that she had committed
the heinous crime of eating a fowl, but that she would expiate the
sacrilege by an early death. The French authorities summoned both the
priest and the woman to the bar of justice. There the priest stuck to it
that he had received the revelati