the dead descend to reach the other world, for then a soul is like to come to harm, and die the other death where there is nothing left, and this is to them the dolefullest thing of all.[1] Thus the Fijians tell of the fight which the ghost of a departed warrior must wage with the soul-killing Samu and his brethren; this is the contest for which the dead man is armed by burying the war-club with his corpse, and if he conquers, the way is open for him to the judgment-seat of Ndengei, but if he is wounded, his doom is to wander among the mountains, and if killed in the encounter he is cooked and eaten by Samu and his brethren. But the souls of unmarried Fijians will not even survive to stand this wager of battle; such try in vain to steal at low water round to the edge of the reef past the rocks where Nangananga, destroyer of wifeless souls, sits laughing at their hopeless efforts, and asking them if they think the tide will never flow again, till at last the rising flood drives the shivering ghosts to the beach, and Nangananga dashes them in pieces on the great black stone, as one shatters rotten firewood.[2] Such, again, were the tales told by the Guinea negroes of the life or death of departed souls. Either the great priest before whom they must appear after death would judge them, sending the good in peace to a happy place, but killing the wicked a second time with the club that stands ready before his dwelling; or else the departed shall be judged by their god at the river of death, to be gently wafted by him to a pleasant land if they have kept feasts and oaths and abstained from forbidden meats, but if not, to be plunged into the river by the god, and thus drowned and buried in eternal oblivion.[3] Even common water can drown a negro ghost, if we may believe the missionary Cavazzi's story of the Matamba widows being ducked in the river or pond to drown off the
- ↑ Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 259.
- ↑ Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 244. See 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 113 (Dayaks). Compare wasting and death of souls in depths of Hades, Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 232.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 401. See also Waitz, 'Anthropologie,' vol. ii. p. 191 (W. Afr.); Callaway, 'Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 355.
