ing forbidden to extend my ramble to any considerable distance towards
the sea. I have since thought it probable, however, that the Typees,
either desirous of removing from their sight the evidences of mortality,
or prompted by a taste for rural beauty, may have some charming cemetery
situated in the shadowy recesses along the base of the mountains. At
Nukuheva, two or three large quadrangular "pi-pis," heavily flagged,
enclosed with regular stone walls, and shaded over and almost hidden from
view by the interlacing branches of enormous trees, were pointed out to me
as burial-places. The bodies, I understood, were deposited in rude vaults
beneath the flagging, and were suffered to remain there without being
disinterred. Although nothing could be more strange and gloomy than the
aspect of these places, where the lofty trees threw their dark shadows
over rude blocks of stone, a stranger looking at them would have discerned
none of the ordinary evidences of a place of sepulture.

During my stay in the valley, as none of its inmates were so accommodating
as to die and be buried in order to gratify my curiosity with regard to
their funeral rites, I was reluctantly obliged to remain in ignorance of
them. As I have reason to believe, however, that the observances of the
Typees in these matters are the same with those of all other tribes on the
island, I will here relate a scene I chanced to witness at Nukuheva.

A young man had died, about daybreak, in a house near the beach. I had
been sent ashore that morning, and saw a good deal of the preparations
they were making for his obsequies. The body, neatly wrapped in new white
tappa, was laid out in an open shed of cocoa-nut boughs, upon a bier
constructed of elastic bamboos ingeniously twisted together. This was
supported, about two feet from the ground, by large canes planted
uprightly in the earth. Two females, of a dejected appearance, watched by
its side, plaintively chanting, and beating the air with large grass fans
whitened with pipe-clay. In the dwelling-house adjoining a numerous
company were assembled, and various articles of food were being prepared
for consumption. Two or three individuals, distinguished by head-dresses
of beautiful tappa, and wearing a great number of ornaments, appeared to
officiate as masters of the ceremonies. By noon the entertainment had
fairly begun, and we were told that it would last during the whole of the
two following days. With the except