BURIAL, WITCHCRAFT, AND OTHER THEMES
A Short-lived Race—An Aged Man a Curiosity—Burial Customs—The
Chief Mourner painted Black—Period of Mourning brief except for
the Chief Mourner—No Belief in Natural Death—Poison always
Suspected—Religion all but absent—Vague Belief in Magic—Fi-fi, a
Form of Divination—How practised—Its Utter Childishness—No Idea
of Number—Forest Warnings—“Wada,” another Form of Sorcery—
Mavai’s Hideous Magical Compounds—A People seemingly without
History or Legends—Pictures understood—Fear of the Stereoscope—
The “Bau-bau” or Social Pipe—How Made and Smoked—Incidents of
Travel—The Stinging Trees—Ideas of Medicine—Sovereign Remedies—
Bleeding—How practised—Hunting—The Corral—A Strange Delicacy—
Story of Native Trust in Me—A Loan of Beads—Children and their
Sports—Thirty Ways of Cat’s-Cradle 309