far country, betel-nut is presented to them all,
but the two living men refuse to partake of it, because they know that
were they to eat it they would return no more to the land of the living.
When they do return, they have often, as might be expected, strange
tales to tell of what they saw among the ghosts. The principal personage
in the other world is called the "keeper of souls." It is said that once
on a time the masterful ghost of a dead chief attempted to usurp the
post of warden of the dead; in pursuance of this ambitious project he
attacked the warden with a tomahawk and cut off one of his legs, but the
amputated limb immediately reunited itself with the body; and a second
amputation was followed by the same disappointing result. Life in the
other world is reported to be very like life in this world. Some people
find it very dismal, and others very beautiful. Those who were rich here
will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in
Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the
life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the
ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard
against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all
breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will
meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the
soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some
animal, for instance, the flying-fox. Hence a native is much alarmed if
he should be sitting under a tree from which a flying-fox has been
frightened away. Should anything drop from the bat or from the tree on
which it was hanging, he would look on it as an omen of good or ill
according to the nature of the thing which fell on or near him. If it
were useless or dirty, he would certainly apprehend some serious
misfortune. Sometimes when a man dies and his soul arrives in the spirit
land, his friends do not want him there and drive him back to earth, so
he comes to life again. That is the explanation which the natives give
of what we call the recovery of consciousness after a faint or
swoon.[645]

[Sidenote: The land of the dead. State of the dead in the other world
supposed to depend on the amount of money they left in this one.]

Some of the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain imagine that
the home of departed spirits is in Nakanei, the part of the coast to
which they sail t