114 CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 



defer my departure, until he consulted his great men ; but 

 in fact I suppose he Avas 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 v/as lying, drest as when alive ; in- 

 side the hut, four Avomen 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- 

 paring for gentlemen, their length being nine feet and their 



