ARBOREAL CEMETERIES. 171 
singular customs, I shall have to speak more at 
length in a future chapter. 
Near one of these arboreal cemeteries, I ob- 
served a high pole, and dangling from it a head, 
fresh, bloody, and ghastly; the scalp had been 
removed, and a rope, passing through the under- 
jaw, served to suspend it. Horribly revolting as 
the face appeared, still I could not help going 
close to it. Never had I seen so singular a 
head; it looked in shape like a sugarloaf, the 
apex of the skull terminating in a sharp point. 
On returning to the fort, I inquired if they could 
tell me anything about this mysterious head. 
It appeared that, a day or so before our arrival, 
a war-party of the Qua-kars had returned from 
a raid on the mainland coast, and brought with 
them a number of slaves. (Prisoners taken in 
war, or in any other manner, are invariably used 
as slaves, bought and sold, whipped or killed, 
as best befits the whim or caprice of their 
owner.) Amongst the wretched captives, was a 
chief. Soon after landing, he was made fast 
to a temporary cross erected on the beach, shot, 
scalped, and beheaded, and it was his head I 
had seen in my rambles. On hearing further 
that the tribe to which he belonged was one 
that elongate instead of flatten the head, I de- 
