A Few Remarks About the Macusis. 141 
fe will tell you “So and so has passed along here.” You will ask “ Why, how 
do you know ?” He will point to some marks of a horse’s hoofs on the ground 
and say “ Don’t you see those marks of his horse ? ” “ Well,” you may object, 
“there are plenty of horses about here, might not those marks belong to 
somebody else’s horse ?”’ But he will insist that those are the marks of that 
horse and no other, and if you take the trouble to make enquiries you will 
find that he was right. 
My last remark will deal with the way the Macusi treats his dead. When 
anyone dies there is no wake or any ceremony whatever over the corpse. The 
moment the breath is out of the body the corpse is wrapped in a hammock 
and carried out to be buried. This rite being finished all the goods and chattels 
are removed from the house and the house itself is burned down, or if this 
cannot be done without endangering other houses, the house is, indeed, allowed 
to 1emain standing but it will be treated as a haunted house and no one will 
ever live in it again. 
To sum up, we may say that the Macusi is a quiet hospitable man, possessing 
an abnormal amount of inquisitiveness, and wonderful powers of observation, 
but singularly devoid of all emotion. 
