CAPTAJN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. II5 



breadth five. At this time they were nine feet deep, but 

 Ave were told they would be dug to the depth of the tallest 

 palnvtree, 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 

 till 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 Avere 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 

 beino- filled in. 



Simmons requested a piece of cloth to envelope his 

 aunt, A\4io 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 



