106 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
as the secretary informed me, they changed their clothes and washed themselves. - 
Shortly afterwards we saw them come out and deposit their cast-off funeral garments 
in a stone receptacle nearat hand. Nota thread leaves the garden, lest it should carry 
defilement into the city. Perfectly new garments are supplied at each funeral. In a 
fortnight, or, at most, four weeks, the same bearers return, and, with gloved hands 
and implements resembling tongs, place the dry skeleton in the central well. There 
the bones find their last resting-place, and there the dust of whole generations of Par- 
sees commingling is left undisturbed for centuries. 
The revolting sight of the gorged vultures made me turn my back on the towers with 
ill-concealed abhorrence. I asked the secretary how it was possible to become recon- 
ciled to such usage. His reply was nearly in the following words: ‘Our prophet 
Zoroaster, who lived 6,000 years ago, taught us to regard the elements as symbols of 
the Deity. Earth, fire, water, he said, ought never, under any circumstances, to be 
defiled by contact with putrefying flesh. Naked, he said, came we into the world and 
naked we ought toleave it. But the decaying particles of our bodies should be dissi- 
pated as rapidly as possible and in such a way that neither Mother Earth nor the 
beings she supports should be contaminated in the slightest degree In fact, our 
prophet was the greatest of health officers, and, following his sanitary laws, we 
build our towers on the tops of the hills, above all human habitations. We spare no 
expense in constructing them ofthe hardest materials, and we expose our putrescent 
bodies in open stone receptacles, resting on fourteen feet of solid granite, not necessarily 
to be consumed by vultures, but to be dissipated in the speediest possible manner and 
without the possibility of polluting the earth or contaminating asingle being dwelling 
thereon. God, indeed, sends the vultures, and, as a matter of fact, these birds do their 
appointed work much more expeditiously than millions of insects would do if we com- 
mitted our bodies to the ground. In a sanitary point of view, nothing can be more 
perfect than our plan. Even the rain-water which washes our skeletons is conducted 
by channels into purifying charcoal. Here in these five towers rest the bones of all 
the Parsees that have lived in Bombay for the last two hundred years. We form a 
united body in life and we are united in death.” 
It would appear that the reasons given for this peculiar mode of dis- 
posing of the dead by the Parsee secretary are quite at variance with 
the ideas advanced by Muret regarding the ancient Persians, and to 
which allusion has already been made. It might be supposed that 
somewhat similar motives to those governing the Parsees actuated those 
of the North American Indians who deposit their dead on scaffolds and 
trees, but the theory becomes untenable when it is recollected that great 
care is taken to preserve the dead from the ravages of carnivorous birds, 
the corpse being carefully enveloped in skins and firmly tied up with 
ropes or thongs. 
Figures 3 and 4 are representations of the Parsee towers of silence, 
drawn by Mr. Holmes, mainly from the description given. 
George Gibbs* gives the following account of burial among the Kla- 
math and Trinity Indians of the Northwest coast, the information havy- 
ing been originally furnished him by James G. Swan. 
The graves, which are in the immediate vicinity of their houses, exhibit very con- 
siderable taste and a laudable care. The dead are inclosed in rude coffins formed by 
placing four boards around the body, and covered with earth to some depth; a heavy 
plank, often supported by upright head and foot stones, is laid upon the top, or stones 
are built up into a wall about afoot above the ground, and the top flagged with 
* Schoolcraft Hist. Ind. Tribes of the United States, 1853, Pt. 3, p. 140. 
