s or her business to counteract a spell cast on a family, or to heal a
sickness inflicted on an individual by one of these ghostly
vagrants.[143] Such was the fear of wandering ghosts that no Marquesan
would dare to stir a step abroad at night without the light of a torch;
for well he knew that evil spirits lurked beside the path to knock down
and throttle any rash wayfarer who should dare to leave his footsteps
unillumined.[144] Indeed, we are told that, of all beliefs in the minds
of the natives, the belief in ghosts was the most deeply rooted. It is
impossible to express the dread which they felt of spectres and
apparitions; nobody was exempt from it. But it was only at night that
these phantoms were to be feared. Though they remained invisible, they
revealed themselves to the terror-stricken wanderer by sound and touch;
the least noise heard in the darkness disclosed their presence; the
least contact with them was a sentence of death, sudden or slow, but
sure. Hence, if a man was obliged to go out after sunset, he would
always take somebody with him to bear him company, even if he had to
wake a comrade for the purpose. Among the women the fear of ghosts was
yet greater, many of them would not stir abroad on a moonless night even
in company. In passing by a burial-ground or a solitary tomb, people
used to throw food towards it for the purpose of appeasing the ghost,
who otherwise would have attacked them.[145]

[141] Mathias G----, _op. cit._ p. 40.

[142] Mathias G----, _op. cit._ p. 210.

[143] Radiguet, _op. cit._ pp. 224 _sq._

[144] Radiguet, _op. cit._ pp. 227, 240.

[145] Eyriaud des Vergnes, _op. cit._ pp. 31 _sq._

This deep-seated fear of the dead has survived the conversion, real or
nominal, of the Marquesans to Christianity. No native would even now
venture into a cave where the remains of the dead have been deposited,
not though the greatest treasures were to be found there, for such spots
are believed to be constantly haunted by the ghosts of the departed.
Nobody, it is said, would live in a house in which somebody has died;
every such dwelling is immediately burnt down. Hence, when a person is
grievously sick, a little primitive hut is erected beside the house, and
he is carried out to die in it, and when he is dead, the hut is in like
manner destroyed with fire.[146] A woman will sometimes commit suicide
in order that her ghost may haunt and torment her unfaithful
husband.[14