A few more words must be said here about sorcery, as this is a matter of great importance in all inter-tribal relations. The dread of sorcery is enormous, and when the natives visit distant parts, this dread is enhanced by the additional awe of the unknown and foreign. Besides the flying witches, there are, in Dobu, men and women who, by their knowledge of magical spells and rites, can inflict disease and cause death. The methods of these sorcerers, and all the beliefs clustering round this subject are very much the same as those in the Trobriands which we shall meet later on. These methods are characterised by being very rational and direct, and implying hardly any supernatural element. The sorcerer has to utter a spell over some substance, and this must be administered by mouth, or else burnt over the fire in the victim’s hut. The pointing stick is also used by the sorcerers in certain rites.
If his methods are compared with those used by flying witches, who eat the heart and lungs, drink the blood, snap the bones of their enemies, and moreover possess the powers of invisibility and of flying, the Dobuan sorcerer seems to have but simple and clumsy means at his disposal. He is also very much behind his Mailu or Motu namesakes—I say namesakes, because sorcerers throughout the Massim are called Bara’u, and the same word is used in Mailu, while the Motu use the reduplicated Babara’u. The magicians in these parts use such powerful methods as those of killing the victim first, opening up the body, removing, lacerating or charming the inside, then bringing the victim to life again, only that he may soon sicken and eventually die.10
According to Dobuan belief, the spirits of the dead go to the top of Mt. Bwebweso on Normanby Island. This confined space harbours the shades of practically all the natives of the d’Entrecasteaux Archipelago, except those of Northern Goodenough Island, who, as I was told by some local informants, go after death to the spirit land of the Trobrianders.11 The Dobuans have also the belief in a double soul—one, shadowy and impersonal, surviving the bodily death for a few days only, and remaining