sland of Tahuata died, and that his body was brought to
the house of the queen on the bay where Father Amable resided. For
thirty days she kept the corpse in the house and occupied herself with
skinning it with her fingers. Questioned by the missionary as to her
reasons for this strange procedure, she answered that her husband's body
must be without spot or stain, in order that the great goddess Upu might
give him leave to dwell in her land and to bathe in her lake. For this
deity rules over a sort of submarine Eden, planted with all sorts of
excellent fruits and beautified by the calm waters of an azure lake. The
natives of Tahuata believe that the souls of all who die in the
archipelago assemble on the top of a high mountain called Kiukiu. When a
great multitude of souls is there gathered together, the sea opens and
the souls fall plump down into the paradise of the goddess Upu.
However, not all of them are permitted to enter the happy land and to
enjoy the pleasures which it offers. Only such are admitted as have
owned in their lifetime many servants and many pigs and have not been
wicked. Further, none may enter in who bear on their body any marks of
tattooing.[135] Hence the reason for flaying dead bodies seems to have
been to efface, by removing the skin, the tattooed marks which would
have acted as a fatal bar to the entrance of the ghost into paradise. As
to the souls of slaves and the poor, in the opinion of the natives of
Tahuata they go to a gloomy land, which is never illumined by the sun,
and where there is nothing but muddy water to drink.[136] Nevertheless
the people would seem to have believed that the souls of the dead
lingered for a time beside their mouldering bodies before they took
their departure for the far country. In this belief they sacrificed to
them pigs, some baked, and some alive. The baked pigs they put in a
hollow log and hung from the roof of the hut, and they said that a god
named Mapuhanui, who in the beginning had bestowed pigs on men, used to
come and feast on the carcasses in company with the ghost. But when they
offered live pigs, they tethered the animals to the hut in which the
dead body lay, and they fed them till the flesh dropped from the
skeleton; after that they allowed the pigs to die of hunger.[137]
Perhaps, like some other peoples, they imagined that the ghost hovered
about his remains so long as the flesh adhered to the bones, but that
when even that faint semblance of lif