YARROW. ] BURIAL IN HOUSES—AFRICA. 1S) 
leur harangue, comme s'il étoit en état de les entendre. Les uns lui demandent pour- 
quoi il s’est laissé mourir avant eux? d’autres lui disent que s’il est mort ce n’est point 
leur faute; que c’est lui méme qui s’est tué par telle débauche on par tel effort; enfin 
sil y a eu quelque défaut dans son gouvernement, on prend ce tems-ld pour le lui re- 
procher. Cependant ils finissent toujours leur harangue, en lui disant de n’étre pas 
faché contre eux, de bien manger, et qwils auront toujours bien soin de lui. 
Another example of burial in houses may be found in vol. vi of the 
publications of the Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. 89, taken from Strachey’s 
Virginia. It is given more as a curious narrative of an early writer on 
American ethnology than for any intrinsic value it may possess as a 
truthful relation of actual events. It relates to the Indians of Virginia: 
Within the chauncell of the temple, by the Okens, are the cenotaphies or the mon- 
uments of their kings, whose bodyes, so soon as they be dead, they embowell, and, 
scraping the flesh from off the bones, they dry the same upon hurdells into ashes, 
which they put into little potts (like the auncyent urnes): the annathomy of the 
bones they bind together or case up in leather, hanging braceletts, or chaines of cop- 
per, beads, pearle, or such like, as they used to wear about most of their joints and 
neck, and so repose the body upon a little scaffold (as upon a tomb), laying by the 
dead bodies’ feet all his riches in severall basketts, his apook, and pipe, and any one 
toy, which in his life he held most deare in his fancy; their inwards they stuff with 
pearle, copper, beads, and such trash, sowed ina skynne, which they overlapp againe 
very carefully in whit skynnes one or two, and the bodyes thus dressed lastly they 
rowle in matts, as for wynding sheets, and so lay them orderly one by one, as they 
dye in their turnes, upon an arche standing (as aforesaid) for the tomb, and thes are 
all the ceremonies we yet can learne that they give unto their dead. We heare of no 
sweet oyles or oyntments that they use to dresse or chest their dead bodies with; albeit 
they want not of the pretious rozzin running out of the great cedar, wherewith in the 
old time they used to embalme dead bodies, washing them in the oyle and licoure 
thereof. Only to the priests the care of these temples and holy interments are com- 
mitted, and these temples are to them as solitary Asseteria colledged or ministers to 
exercise themselves in contemplation, for they are seldome out of them, and therefore 
often lye in them and maynteyne contynuall fier in the same, upon a hearth somewhat 
neere the east end. 
For their ordinary burialls they digg a deepe hole in the earth with sharpe stakes, 
and the corps being lapped in skynns and matts with their jewells, they laye uppon 
sticks in the ground, and soe cover them with earth; the buryall ended, the women 
(being painted all their faces with black coale and oyle) do sitt twenty-four howers in 
their howses, mourning and lamenting by turnes, with such yelling and howling as 
may expresse their great passions. d 
While this description brings the subject under the head before given 
—house burial—at the same time it might also afford an example of 
embalmment or mummifying. 
Figure 1 may be referred to as a probable representation of the temple 
or charnel-house described. 
The modes of burial described in the foregoing accounts are not to be 
considered rare; for among certain tribes in Africa similar practices 
prevailed. For instance, the Bari of Central Africa, according to the 
Rey. J. G. Wood,* bury their dead within the ineclosure of the home- 
stead, fix a pole in the ground, and fasten to it certain emblems. The 
Apingi, according to the same author, permit the corpse to remain in 
its dwelling until it falls to pieces. The bones are then collected and 
* Uncivilized Races of the World, 1870, vol i, p. 464. 
