years later, in 1904,
Dr. Seligmann was able to devote somewhat more time to the investigation
of the same region and has given us the results of his enquiries in a
valuable book. But the time at his disposal did not suffice for a
thorough investigation of this large region; and accordingly his
information, eked out though it is by that of Protestant and Catholic
missionaries, still leaves us in the dark as to much which we should
wish to know. Among the natives of British New Guinea our information is
especially defective in regard to the Papuans, who occupy the greater
part of the possession, including the whole of the western region; for
Dr. Seligmann's book, which is the most detailed and systematic work yet
published on the ethnology of British New Guinea, deals almost
exclusively with the Melanesian portion of the population. Accordingly I
shall begin what I have to say on this subject with the Melanesian or
rather Papuo-Melanesian tribes of south-eastern New Guinea.

[Sidenote: The Motu, their beliefs and customs concerning the dead.]

Amongst these people the best known are the Motu, a tribe of fishermen
and potters, who live in and about Port Moresby in the Central District
of British New Guinea. Their language conforms to the Melanesian type.
They are immigrants, but the country from which they came is
unknown.[312] In their opinion the spirits of the dead dwell in a happy
land where parted friends meet again and never suffer hunger. They fish,
hunt, and plant, and are just like living men, except that they have no
noses. When they first arrive in the mansions of the blest, they are
laid out to dry on a sort of gridiron over a slow fire in order to purge
away the grossness of the body and make them ethereal and light, as
spirits should be. Yet, oddly enough, though they have no noses they
cannot enter the realms of bliss unless their noses were pierced in
their lifetime. For these savages bore holes in their noses and insert
ornaments, or what they regard as such, in the holes. The operation is
performed on children about the age of six years; and if children die
before it has been performed on them, the parents will bore a hole in
the nose of the corpse in order that the spirit of the child may go to
the happy land. For if they omitted to do so, the poor ghost would have
to herd with other whole-nosed ghosts in a bad place called Tageani,
where there is little food to eat and no betelnuts to chew. The spirits