17()9* HOUND THE WOI^LD. 145 



gods eat, any more than the Jews suppose that Jeho- 

 vah could dwell in a house : the offering is made here 

 upon the same principle as the temple was built at 

 Jerusalem, as an expression of reverence and grati- 

 tude, and a solicitation of the more immediate pre- 

 sence of the Deity. In the front of the area was a 

 kind of stile, where the relations of the deceased 

 stood, to pay the tribute of their sorrow ; and under 

 the awning were innumerable small pieces of cloth, 

 on which the tears and blood of the mourners had 

 been shed ; for in their paroxysms of grief it is a 

 universal custom to wound themselves with the shark's 

 tooth. Within a few yards two occasional houses 

 were set up, in one of which some relations of the 

 deceased constantly resided, and in the other the 

 chief mourner, who is always a man, and who keeps 

 there a very singular dress in which a ceremony is 

 performed that will be described in its turn. Near 

 the place where the dead are thus set up to rot the 

 bones are afterwards buried. 



What can have introduced among these people the 

 custom of exposing their dead above ground till the 

 ilesh is consumed by putrefaction, and then burying 

 the bones, it is, perhaps, impossible to guess ; but it 

 is remarkable, that ^lian and ApoUonius Rhodius 

 impute a similar practice to the ancient inhabitants 

 of Colchis, a country near Pontus, in Asia, now called 

 Mingrelia ; except that among them this manner of 

 disposing of the dead did not extend to both sexes : 

 the women they buried ; but the men they wrapped 

 in a hide, and hung up in the air by a chain. This 

 practice among the Colchians is referred to a religious 

 cause. The principal objects of their worship were 

 the earth and the air; and it is supposed that, in 

 consequence of some superstitious notion, they de- 

 voted their dead to both. Whether the natives of 

 Otaheite had any notion of the same kind, we were 

 never able certainly to determine; but we soon dis- 

 covered, that the repositories of their dead were also 



VOL. I. L 



