234 TIlE RITUAL OF BARROWS AND CIRCLES. 



the bones were buried, sometimes within a pyramidal stone 

 structure not unlike a long barrow. 



In Guiana the dead body, secured in a net, was lowered into 

 the river, where the flesh was removed by fish. The skeleton 

 was then dried, painted red, and set up inside the dwelling- 

 place. 



Among the New Zealanders, the dead were either buried in a 

 contracted posture or exposed for a while on platforms. In 

 either case, when the flesh had decayed away, the bones were 

 washed and enclosed in a small box, which was generally raised 

 on a pole, in or near the village. 



As regards the Esthonians, whose lands bordered the Baltic, it 

 is related by Paulus Orosius, who wrote in 417, that when a man 

 is dead he lies in his house unburnt for one or two months, and, 

 if he be a man of high rank, for half a year before he is burned. 

 From this it would appear that after cremation had been intro- 

 duced the practice of " dual disposal " was not abandoned. 

 And even when incineration had become the primary method, a 

 secondary burning was followed, so strong had the tradition 

 become. For among the modern rearers of megaliths, the 

 Khasis of Bengal, the final disposal does not take place till long 

 after the body has been reduced to ashes on the pyre. These 

 are then placed in a vase within a small stone cist, which, at the 

 end of a year is opened, and the contents subjected to a 

 secondary, slight, ceremonial incineration, and after which they 

 are finally inurned with the ashes of the ancestors ; and in some 

 places, in former times, vessels for offerings of food were laid 

 upon the lid of the receptacle. 



It is related by Giles Fletcher, who wrote as the envoy of 

 Queen Elizabeth, that in Russia, " during the winter when all is 

 covered with snow, so many as die are piled up in a suburban 

 hovel, like billets on a woodstack, till the spring-tide, when every 

 man takes and inters his dead friend." And it appears that 

 among the Chinese, at the present day, dead bodies are stored in 

 open mortuaries for years, awaiting interment with their 

 ancestors. 



