My observations led me to the following results: according to native belief, the soul leaves the body after death, and wanders about near by. Apparently the idea is that it remains in connection with the body for a certain time, for in some districts the corpse is fed for five days or longer; in Vao a bamboo tube is used, which leads from the surface of the earth to the mouth of the buried body. The souls of low-caste people soon disappear, but the higher the caste, the longer the soul stays on earth. Still, the natives have some conception of a paradise in which the soul of the high-caste finds all bliss and delight, and which the soul ultimately enters. This idea may have come up since the arrival of Christianity. It is customary to hold a death-feast for a man of no caste after five days, for a low-caste after one hundred, and for a high-caste after three hundred or even one thousand days. The soul remains in contact with the world of the living, and may be perceived as a good or bad spirit of as much power as the man had when alive. To obtain the favour and assistance of these spirits seems to be the fundamental idea, the main object of religion in the New Hebrides. The spirit of an ancestor will naturally favour his descendants, unless they have offended him deeply; and the more powerful the dead ancestor was, the stronger and safer do his descendants feel under the protection of his spirit. If a man has no powerful ancestral ghost, he joins some strong clan, and strives for the favour of its tutelary spirit by means of rich sacrifices. The spirits admit those who bring many sacrifices to their special favour and intimacy; these people are supposed to have gone half-way to the spirit-world, and even in this life they are dreaded and enormously influential; for the spirits will help him in every way, the elements are his servants, and he can perform the most terrible sorceries. Thus he terrorizes the country, becomes chief, and after death he joins the other ghosts as a powerful member of their company. The "Suque" transferred the hierarchy of the spirit-world into this world, and regulated the number of castes and the method of rising in caste; it also originated the rules for entering into connection with the other world. Its origin probably goes back to one of those secret societies so highly developed in Melanesia, of which I shall speak later.