This final scene is represented in an illustration on the 980th page. In the foreground is seen the open grave, with the bodies of the murdered women lying in it as “grass.” The still living king is being borne to the grave by the attendants, while his successor sits mournfully surveying a scene which he knows will be re-enacted in his own case, should he live to be old and infirm. Just above the grave are the rolls of fine mats with which the body of the king is to be covered before the earth is filled in; and in the background appears the mast of the canoe which brought the party to the burial-ground. The reader cannot but notice the resemblance between this Fijian custom of strangling the wives and the well-known suttee of India. In both cases the women are the foremost to demand death, and for the same reason. Just as the Hindoo women arrange their own funeral pile, and light it with their own hands, the Fijian woman helps to dig her own grave, lines it with mats and then seats herself in it. The fact is, that the woman has positively no choice in the matter; a wife who survives her husband is condemned to a life of neglect, suffering, and insult, so that the short agony of immediate death is preferable to such a fate, especially as by yielding to the national custom she believes that she shall secure a happy and honored life in the spirit land. Moreover, her relatives are bound by custom to insist upon her death, as, if they did not follow this custom, they would be accused of disrespect toward her husband and his family, and would run the risk of being clubbed in revenge. In consequence of this horrid custom, the population of Fiji has been greatly checked, for not only is there the direct sacrifice of life, but much indirect loss is occasioned. Many of the murdered women are mothers, whose children die for want of maternal care, so that, what with the perpetual feuds and continual murders, the custom of cannibalism, the sacrifice of wives with their husbands, the strangling of the old or sick, and the death of children by neglect, very few Fijians die from natural causes. Mr. Williams mentions that in a class of nine children under his charge, the parents had all been murdered with the exception of two, and these had been condemned to death, and only saved through the exertions of the missionaries.