ts." "I cannot carry the child," said the spirit; "I
am too cold from the sea." When they were got on board the canoe the
wife smelt carrion. "How is this?" she said. "What have you in the canoe
that I should smell carrion?" "It is nothing in the canoe," said the
spirit. "It is the land-wind blowing down the mountains, where some
beast lies dead." It appears it was still night when they reached
Manu'a--the swiftest passage on record--and as they entered the reef the
bale-fires burned in the village. Again she asked him to carry the
child; but now he need no more dissemble. "I cannot carry your child,"
said he, "for I am dead, and the fires you see are burning for my
funeral."

The curious may learn in Dr. Sierich's book the unexpected sequel of the
tale. Here is enough for my purpose. Though the man was but new dead,
the ghost was already putrefied, as though putrefaction were the mark
and of the essence of a spirit. The vigil on the Paumotuan grave does
not extend beyond two weeks, and they told me this period was thought to
coincide with that of the resolution of the body. The ghost always
marked with decay--the danger seemingly ending with the process of
dissolution--here is tempting matter for the theorist. But it will not
do. The lady of the flowers had been long dead, and her spirit was still
supposed to bear the brand of perishability. The Resident had been more
than a fortnight buried, and his vampire was still supposed to go the
rounds.

Of the lost state of the dead, from the lurid Mangaian legend, in which
infernal deities hocus and destroy the souls of all, to the various
submarine and aerial limbos where the dead feast, float idle, or resume
the occupations of their life on earth, it would be wearisome to tell.
One story I give, for it is singular in itself, is well known in Tahiti,
and has this of interest, that it is post-Christian, dating indeed from
but a few years back. A princess of the reigning house died; was
transported to the neighbouring isle of Raiatea; fell there under the
empire of a spirit who condemned her to climb coco-palms all day and
bring him the nuts; was found after some time in this miserable
servitude by a second spirit, one of her own house; and by him, upon her
lamentations, reconveyed to Tahiti, where she found her body still
waked, but already swollen with the approaches of corruption. It is a
lively point in the tale that, on the sight of this dishonoured
tabernacle, the prin