They do not possess any temples of worship, but have wooden idols or gods with which they decorate their houses; however, I have never seen them fall down and worship them, nor, as far as I know, is it their practice to do so. They believe in all sorts of "Devils" whom it is necessary to propitiate, but strange to say they have no idea of any beneficent spirits working for their good. I was present at several funerals or wakes, all of them being of women. When a woman dies beautiful wreaths of wild flowers are placed on the corpse, which is laid on the knees of two of her nearest relatives in the house. Her friends gather round, and weep and wail all night long, making the darkness hideous with their groans, but some of them feel real grief at their loss. At sunrise a canoe is in waiting, which conveys the body to her native place, which may be an island a few miles away. There it is decently interred, with more weeping, and all is over. Their method of going into mourning is very similar to our own. We wear black clothes, whilst they paint themselves black all over like Christy Minstrels, so that it is difficult to recognize them, their natural colour being a nutty brown. The period of mourning generally lasts about two months, and it looks very comical when the mourning is getting washed out. In some parts of New Guinea the women wear a net over their shoulders and breasts as a token of mourning, but the general custom is to dye themselves black. With all their savagery their different customs resemble many of our civilized ones. _Marriage._--They have no priests to perform this ceremony. When a man has reached a marriageable age, say twenty, he looks out for a wife. He selects a girl to his fancy, but has invariably to wait a long time before the marriage takes place, and it is very often a difficult matter for a young man to obtain a wife at all. When the day of the marriage has arrived the young couple retire to the house which has been prepared for them, and are thenceforth looked upon by their relatives as man and wife. They keep the marriage state as inviolate as Europeans do. On the wedding day they give a banquet to their friends, consisting of yams, bananas, betel-nut and the fatted pig, also presents to the bride's family, and, let us hope, live happily ever afterwards. As a rule the natives have only one wife, but in some instances two.