But what is more curious still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the self-same person as the old one.

So far as I have been able to understand their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls.

The soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office.

Thus they speak as though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders.

They are a very curious people, these Bouparese.