8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hand with an arrow. Furthermore, the undertakers or managers 

 of the royal funeral had to furnish a woman, a cup-bearer, a 

 cook, a waiter, a messenger, and a certain number of horses ; all 

 to be killed. In fact, in the particular king's funeral which the 

 great Greek historian is describing they took the king's minis- 

 ters, fifty in number, and strangled them. Then, having killed 

 fifty of the chief horses of the king, they prepared them and set 

 them in a circle, upon each one a strangled rider, that they 

 might serve as a royal guard to the dead hero/' " The chiefs 

 of the Fiji* Islands have from fifty to one hundred wives, accord- 

 ing to their rank. At the interment of a principal chief the body 

 is laid in state upon a spacious lawn in the presence of an im- 

 mense concourse of spectators. The principal wife, after the ut- 

 most ingenuity of the natives has been exercised in adorning her 

 person, then walks out and takes her seat near the body of her 

 husband. A rope is passed round her neck, which eight or ten 

 powerful men pull, until she is strangled and dies. Her body is 

 then laid by that of the chief. In this manner four wives are sacri- 

 ficed, and all of them are interred in a common grave, one above, 

 one below, and one on either side of the husband. This is done 

 that the spirit of the chief be not lonely in its passage to the in- 

 visible world, and that, by such an offering, its happiness may be 

 at once secured." It may be added to this that, in certain lands, 

 the custom is to inter alive the attendants of the dead chieftain ; 

 it being believed that this precaution adds to the solemnity of the 

 occasion and to the future happiness of the departed. In ancient 

 Mexico this practice of sacrificing upon the occasion of a funeral 

 was carried on with great pomp and lavish effusion of blood, in 

 some cases a hundred persons being slain to act as guides and 

 servitors to the deceased chief iri his journey to the other world. 

 In India, owing to the kindly offices of the British Government, 

 the terrible suttee has entirely disappeared. This, it is need- 

 less to say, was the custom of self-sacrifice by the wife of the 

 dead husband. It is impossible not to admire the heroic spirit of 

 those Hindoo widows who deemed it a high honor to cast them- 

 selves upon the funeral pyre of their spouse. " Indeed, when the 

 female slaves find their mistress is greatly afflicted at the loss of 

 her husband, they promise her, in case she is resolved not to sur- 

 vive him, to burn themselves along with her, and are always as 

 good as their word. They dance near the funeral pyre, and throw 

 themselves into it, one after another." 



The two other modes of sepulture are, as has been said, em- 

 balming and cremation. Embalming was not unknown among 

 the ancient Hebrews : there is frequent allusion in the later Scrip- 

 tures, and especially in the New Testament, to the embalming of 

 the body in antiseptics and fragrant substances. But the land 



