A grim monster abides in the vicinity of this tree. He is an aboriginal spirit, and the King of the state. That lake hard by is the Face-Washing-Water; and there, coming along the narrow path by that clump of banana trees, is a stranger with blackened face. He is making for the lake, but there is in his way a fence well guarded by the King, whose title of office for this particular duty is “Spirit-Smiter.” Our friend will not be able to pass him without a challenge. But if he be a chieftain of high rank, he may succeed in dashing bravely through the fence in spite of its ghastly guardian. If, on the contrary, he be a man of low degree, a turncoat or a coward, or one of the “uncircumcised,” he will make for the woods to avoid the hurdles and their awful guard, even as Bunyan’s pilgrim turned aside into “Bye-path Meadow,” to escape the roughness of the right road. Woe betide the poor wretch if the “Clubber” or any of his tribe catch him anywhere out there. He will be eaten by the cannibal aborigines of the state as sure as he is a spirit. On, the warrior presses, wielding his club right dexterously. The fence is smashed, and the Smiter is vanquished. Had the dreaded Spirit-Smiter prevailed, instead of the glorious son of Mars, the inhabitants of Fiji would have been made aware of the melancholy event by a great calm, which to them is always a sign that the Smiter has smitten a spirit.
The spirit of another man is busily picking up stones to throw at the fruit of a screw-pine, standing some 40 or 50 yards from his right hand. Count the stones as he throws them, and you will learn both the number of his widows and how many of them are being strangled and hurried off with the utmost despatch to follow and wait upon their lord throughout his future career in the land of spirits. Unfortunate wretch! He has thrown ten times, and never once hit the object of his aim. He left ten wives behind, not one of whom is coming to alleviate the miseries of his solitude, in whose face he discovers no charms; and he therefore sits down to moan and howl over his lonely and pitiful lot, or to address himself upbraidingly to his yet unstrangled wives, and their thoughtless and hardhearted friends. “Oh, I am weary of waiting here,” he exclaims. “Once I was weary with collecting many riches for you and your kinsfolk, and this is their love to me for all my pains.” The state of morals among his countrymen is growing worse and worse. The greatest and most dearly cherished institutions of the land are falling into neglect; and so this disconsolate spirit has nothing before him but wailing and weeping to tramp his lonely way.
But here is another spirit of far more chiefly bearing than the last. He is too rich to throw stones at the screw-pine, and uses whales’ teeth instead. Out of 20 shots he has struck the mark 7 times. He has 20 wives, and 7 of them are being strangled, that they may have the unspeakable privilege of accompanying their lord through all the kingdoms of this mysterious world.
The love of cannibal women for their husbands was not the outcome of the heart’s deepest and tenderest affections, but a compound made up of one part of something akin to love, and nine parts of fear; the whole leading to a hero-worship which enslaved both body and mind here and spirit hereafter. While he lived, the woman was the hero’s beast of burden, not his loving or beloved companion; and when he died the mesmeric power of his tyrannic will, sweeping once more over and through her spirit, like the last and fiercest gust of a hurricane, bent all her nature to one idea, which, inspired by superstition, led her to court death for his sake.
“But still they come!
Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er
Have thought that death so many had despoil’d.”
Some in the crowd have never had their ears bored; their future life will in consequence be one of much misery. An officer, whose duty it is to punish such unprepared immigrants, will presently come along, and, piercing every unbored ear with his ponderous spear, will thrust into the hole thus made the heavy log of wood from 2 to 3 yards long, used by the women of Fiji for beating native cloth or tapa on. The merciless judge condemns each offender to carry this burden in his ear forever; i.e., during the unknown period of his stay in this state. How great must be the necessity for having one’s ears bored while in this life. Men used to bore the lobes of their ears, and stretch them so much afterwards, that in the course of a few years they would hang dangling on their shoulders.
State the Third, like all the other States, has its “Spirit-Smiter,” who is distinguished by peculiar and special characteristics of his own. He of this State is its King. It is said that he keeps a cock which crows without fail on the approach of a human spirit. When once the Smiter strikes with his club, the effect is as though the very bones of the smitten child of earth crumbled away from his less material substance. This bone dust, the old dogmas tell us, is saved, and afterwards passed forward to another state in the Cannibal Hades, where it serves as fuel for the household fires of that country. The most remarkable feature of spiritual existence here, is that each earth-born spirit carries about with him an appropriate mark by which the work he was most distinguished for before leaving the body is published to all who meet him. The spirit now passing up the hill to the right was a great yam-planter, for his forehead bears upon it the figure of a yam. On another you will see the impress of sugar-cane, or bread-fruit, or taro, or whatever sort of vegetable he was in the habit of cultivating most abundantly. Here and there we shall meet some fine old men having their foreheads branded with figures of various vegetables, and carrying fire-sticks in their hands. They were men reported in their day as noted planters, the real producers of their country’s wealth—men who would not let the tall reeds grow where the yam-vine ought to creep, for want of fire to burn them off the ground. It is one of the first duties of the chief of this state to see that his country is well planted for the benefit of expected arrivals from earth. He has gardens for the spirit of each inhabitant of Fiji. The disembodied spirit on arrival hurries away to the banana plantation. Should no ripe bananas be found, he will have to put up with unripe ones; whence it will be known by the people of the place that he left the earth before his time. If he committed suicide, or was drowned or murdered, or if in any other unnatural way he met his death, his friends will say, “He died before his bananas in Hades were ripe.”
Sounds of music strike upon the ear. We are in the Fourth State—the land of song. The subjects of this mirthful state, sing again and again the natural songs of the aboriginal race without weariness. It were well if they could abide here for ever. But the spirit-world of the cannibal is too like his old one, for that, in its countless alternations between pleasure and pain. There are some even now, whose time being up, are gliding away to the Fifth State.