Again, on the eighth day, the final mourning ceremony was gone through, when, in honour of the thirteen villages of the island, thirteen pairs of spoons and forks, and sundry other articles, were destroyed, and the guests were entertained at a feast of equal munificence to that they had shortly before taken part in.
The second case is that of a man, nearly one hundred years old, who owned a third part of the village of Lapáti.
The body was neatly wrapped in cloths under a curtain in the "deadhouse." A sort of open coffin, about 7 feet long and 4 feet wide, was made, and six thick green canes were fastened to it, three to the head and three to the foot, each cane about 50 yards long.
When all was ready the coffin was drawn into the "deadhouse" up a sloping plank, and when the corpse had been placed within, two women got in and lay on either side the body, embracing it with their arms. When the coffin was lowered to the ground two big men also laid themselves down in it.
The large Elpanam was filled with a crowd of about a thousand people, young and old, from other villages. Of these, a hundred from the southern and a hundred from the northern villages seized the long canes at either end, and dragged the coffin up and down in competition until the canes were broken, when, the grave being dug, the body was buried.
This ceremony is performed only when those of the highest repute are interred.
Once in every five years the villages in turn remove all their pigs, and keep them in sties in the jungle. The surroundings of the village are then offered to the public for cultivating fruit and vegetables, and the people from other villages arrive and make gardens, which are open; there is no need for fencing, since there are no pigs to cause damage.
The reason for all this is that after demolishing the ñá-kopáh (sacrifice to the dead), during the festival of Kana Awn, the yams and other vegetables and fruit with which they are loaded are scattered about the houses, and grow abundantly; to obtain some profit from this unplanned result this custom has been introduced.
The people in general have their large vegetable plantations at a distance, but for immediate use there are some smaller gardens near the village. The tamiluanas informed the people that in consequence of the flourishing condition of these latter, the devils were angry, and might cause the island to be drowned by a deluge, and that to save themselves they should uproot part of the plants. Accordingly, the greater portion of the yams and other vegetables were destroyed; some of the people doing it willingly, others with discontent.