302 FOSSIL MEN. 



tumuli, and also cremation, have their representatives 

 on both sides of the Atlantic. What may be called 

 the house-tomb, representing the habitation of the 

 deceased person when in life, is world- wide in its ex- 

 tension. It is seen in the lodge of the western Indian 

 or the winter-house of the Esquimaux closed up and 

 converted into a sepulchre, in the gallery graves, 

 dolmens and chambered barrows of Europe, and in the 

 rock-cut tombs of Etruria, Egypt, and the East, and 

 the chamber-tombs of Peru. In all cases it points to 

 the idea of a house of the dead corresponding to that 

 of the living, and has no obscure connection with the 

 belief in a resurrection of the body. The tumulus, in 

 every style, from the little grave-mound of a country 

 churchyard, or of an ordinary Indian burial-place, to 

 the ossuaries of the Hurons, the huge mounds of the 

 Ohio, the barrows of Europe and Asia, and the pyra- 

 mids of Egypt, which are merely great stone tumuli, 

 is common to the most varied tribes, and in its grander 

 forms is a regal tomb, equally in America and the 

 Old World. The descriptions of such burials in Homer, 

 probably refer to customs of extreme antiquity even 

 in his days, and they are obviously identical with 

 those of the more civilized tribes of America. The 

 body laid on the pyre and buried with precious offer- 

 ings and with animal sacrifices, and the whole covered 

 with a lofty mound of heaped-up earth, not forgetting 

 the war-dance around the pyre and the funeral feast, 

 are all equally applicable to the Alleghans and other 

 tribes of America, to whom the Homeric song of the 



