114 CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 
defer my departure, until he consulted his great men ; but 
in fact I suppose he was sorry to lose his daily bottle of 
spirits, for as he sent me every morning a bottle of palm: 
wine, I returned him one of rum. Finding I was deter- 
mined, he ceased all solicitation, and gave me three of his 
sons, and two pilots to accompany me to Binda; I had also 
engaged four boys as a boats crew, finding them extremely 
useful, in saving my own people a great deal of trouble 
by going backwards and forwards with the Naturalists. 
In returning from this visit, we passed a hut in which 
the corpse of a woman was lying, drest as when alive ; in- 
side the hut, four women were howling, and outside, two 
men standing close to the hut, with their faces leaning 
against it, kept them company in a kind of cadence, pro- 
ducing a concert not unlike the Irish funeral yell. These 
marks of sorrow, we understood, were repeated for an hour 
for four successive days after the death of the person. This 
scene induced me to enquire for the burying ground, and 
the natives at first seemed very unwilling to let us see it; 
after a little persuasion, however, two or three of them led 
us towards it, and we found it not above 200 yards from 
the banza, amongst a few rugged trees and bushes, and 
over-run with withered grass. ‘Two graves were now pre- 
aring for gentlemen, their length being nine feet and their 
paring tor g S 8 
