ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315828060/49546f0e-ce84-4e70-9b40-7107f16ee305/content/ufig_a_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>MONG the people of these islands, who constitute, as it were, a link between Australia and New Guinea, it is believed that the spirits of the dead go to a mythical island in the North West. The name used for this place by the inhabitants of the Western part of the Torres Straits is Kibu, which means, Sun-down, and, as Dr. Haddon (a) points out, a very practical reason why these islanders should place the land of the dead in the West is that for two-thirds of the year the Trade winds blow from the South-East, and thus would bear the departing spirits towards the Northwest. The ghosts would be too weak to battle against an adverse wind. The fact, however, that the Isles of the Blest are usually placed in the West, as we shall see later, shows that there is some more widespread and universal cause for the choice of their situation, and it seems clear that even to the most primitive savage there appears to be some mysterious link between the sun, which is one of the chief sources of life on this planet, and the lives of man. The Kibu of the Torres Straits clearly corresponds with the Western Paradise of the Chinese and the Island of the Blest in the Hung ritual.
