e had vanished he went away and had
no further occasion for pigs, whether alive or dead.

[134] Mathias G----, _op. cit._ p. 116.

[135] Lettre du R. P. Amable, in _Annales de la Propagation de
la Foi_, xix. (1847) pp. 22 _sq._, 24.

[136] Lettre du R. P. Amable, _op. cit._ p. 24.

[137] Lettre du R. P. Amable, _op. cit._ pp. 23 _sq._

However, the souls of the dead were not supposed to be permanently
confined to the other world. After a long sojourn in it, all alike,
whatever the region they inhabited in their disembodied state, could
return to earth and be born again.[138] Indeed, according to the natives
of Nukahiva, the interval between death and reincarnation was not unduly
long; for "every one here is persuaded, that the soul of a grandfather
is transmitted by Nature into the body of his grandchildren; and that,
if an unfruitful wife were to place herself under the corpse of her
deceased grandfather, she would be sure to become pregnant."[139]
Occasionally the soul of a dead person might even inhabit the body of an
animal. Once when a whale was stranded on one of the islands, a
priestess declared that it was the soul of a certain priest, which would
wander until eight human victims were sacrificed to the gods. In vain
her son would have substituted turtles for human beings; the people
would not hear of it; the prescribed victims were captured from a
neighbouring tribe and put to death in order to lay the ghost of the
whale, or rather of the priest who had animated the whale's body.[140]

[138] Lettre du R. P. Amable, _op. cit._ p. 24.

[139] Lisiansky, _op. cit._ p. 89.

[140] Radiguet, _op. cit._ pp. 161 _sq._

But the souls of the dead were also believed to return from the spirit
land for other purposes than to be born again in the flesh. They might
come as ghosts to haunt and torment the living, and as such they were
greatly dreaded by the people.[141] The first watch of the night was the
hour when they were supposed especially to come on errands of
mischief.[142] Particularly dreaded were the ghosts of high priests and
great chiefs, who retained in their spiritual form the passions and the
rancours which they had nursed in life, and who returned in ghostly
shape to earth to meddle with the affairs of the living, and to punish
even trivial offences. To guard against these dangerous intrusions, the
intervention of a priest or priestess was deemed indispensable; it was
hi