pillow.  The sticks used to answer the purpose of a pick-axe in digging the grave were also carefully buried with the body.  Not that they thought these things of use to the dead; but it was supposed that if they were left and handled by others further disease and death would be the consequence.  Other mats were spread over the body, on these a layer of white sand from the beach, and then they filled up the grave.  The spot was marked by a little heap of stones a foot or two high.  The grave of a chief was neatly built up in an oblong slanting form, about three feet high at the foot and four at the head.  White stones or shells were intermixed with the top layer, and if it had been a noted warrior his grave might be surrounded with spears, or his club laid loosely on the top.

Embalming was known and practised with surprising skill in one particular family of chiefs.  Unlike the Egyptian method, as described by Herodotus, it was performed in Samoa exclusively by women.  The viscera being removed and buried, they, day after day, anointed the body with a mixture of oil and aromatic juices.  To let the fluids escape, they continued to puncture the body all over with fine needles.  In about two months the process of desiccation was completed.  The hair, which had been cut and laid aside at the commencement of the operation, was now glued carefully on to the scalp by a resin from the bush.  The abdomen was filled up with folds of native cloth; the body was wrapped up with the same material, and laid out on a mat, leaving the hands, face, and head exposed.  A house was built for the purpose, and there the body was placed with a sheet of native cloth loosely thrown over it.  Now and then the face was oiled with a mixture of scented oil and turmeric, and passing strangers were freely admitted to see the remains of the departed.  Until about twenty years ago there were four bodies laid out in this way in a house belonging to the family to which we refer, viz. a chief, his wife, and two sons.  They were laid on a platform raised on a double canoe.  They must have been embalmed upwards of thirty years, and although thus exposed, they were in a remarkable state of preservation.  They assigned no particular reason for this embalming, further than that it was the expression of their affection to keep the bodies of the departed still with them as if they were alive.  None were allowed to dress them but a particular family of old ladies, who all died off; and, as there was a superstitious fear on the part of some, and an unwillingness on the part of others, to handle them, it was resolved at last to lay them underground.