It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it and pray you to death.

Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of damaging prayer.

This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.
In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise.

Some native women of noble rank had as many as six husbands.

A woman thus supplied did not reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each in turn.