CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 115 
breadth five. At this time they were nine feet deep, but 
we were told they would be dug to the depth of the tallest 
palm-tree, preserving the same length and breadth as at pre- 
sent; the soil, we observed, was a superficial layer of black 
earth 18 inches deep, and all the rest a compact yellow 
clay ; the graves are dug by the same hoes that are used to 
ull the ground, and the excavation is carried on in the 
neatest manner. One of the old graves had a large ele- 
phant’s tooth at each end, and another, which we under- 
stood to be a child, had a small tooth laying on it; all had 
broken jars, mugs, glass-bottles, and other vessels stuck on 
them ; some shewed that there had been young trees planted 
round them, but all were dead except one plant of the 
Cactus quadrangularis. ‘The graves seemed to be indis- 
criminately dug to all parts of the compass, and no atten- 
tion appeared to have been paid to them since their first 
being filled in. 
Simmons requested a piece of cloth to envelope his 
aunt, who had been dead seven years, and was to be buried 
in two months, being now arrived at a size to make a genteel 
funeral. ‘The manner of preserving corpses, for so long a 
time, is by enveloping them in cloth money of the country, 
or in European cottons, the smell of putrefaction being only 
kept in by the quantity of wrappers, which are successively 
