which fish, pig, and popoi were indispensable ingredients. So
far this is clear enough. But here Tari went on to instance the new
house of Toma and the house-warming feast which was just then in
preparation as instances in point. Dare we indeed string them together,
and add the case of the deserted ruin, as though the dead continually
besieged the paepaes of the living; were kept at arm's-length, even from
the first foundation, only by propitiatory feasts, and, so soon as the
fire of life went out upon the hearth, swarmed back into possession of
their ancient seat?

I speak by guess of these Marquesan superstitions. On the cannibal ghost
I shall return elsewhere with certainty. And it is enough, for the
present purpose, to remark that the men of the Marquesas, from whatever
reason, fear and shrink from the presence of ghosts. Conceive how this
must tell upon the nerves in islands where the number of the dead
already so far exceeds that of the living, and the dead multiply and the
living dwindle at so swift a rate. Conceive how the remnant huddles
about the embers of the fire of life; even as old Red Indians, deserted
on the march and in the snow, the kindly tribe all gone, the last flame
expiring, and the night around populous with wolves.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] In English usually written "taboo": "tapu" is the correct Tahitian
form.--[ED.]

CHAPTER V

DEPOPULATION

Over the whole extent of the South Seas, from one tropic to another, we
find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of
even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian
trembled for the future. We may accept some of the ideas of Mr. Darwin's
theory of coral islands, and suppose a rise of the sea, or the
subsidence of some former continental area, to have driven into the tops
of the mountains multitudes of refugees. Or we may suppose, more
soberly, a people of sea-rovers, emigrants from a crowded country, to
strike upon and settle island after island, and as time went on to
multiply exceedingly in their new seats. In either case the end must be
the same; soon or late it must grow apparent that the crew are too
numerous, and that famine is at hand. The Polynesians met this emergent
danger with various expedients of activity and prevention. A way was
found to preserve breadfruit by packing it in artificial pits; pits
forty feet in depth and of proportionate bore are still to be seen, I am
told, in the