IXHABITAiiTS OF AEGENTINA. 417 



relative, slave, or mistress. On the death of any young person in the toldo, or 

 tent, the head of the family had to secretly remove the appointed victim far from 

 the camp, and despatch her with a knife. This duty was sternly exacted, especi- 

 ally in the case of mothers-in-law. Hence, in anticipation of such a tragic end, 

 the parents of the bride were careful to live apart from the son-in-law, never 

 comino- in contact or holding any intercourse with him. A similar custom is 

 known to prevail amongst the Papuans, the Australians, the Zulu-Kaffirs of South 

 Africa, and many other primitive peoples. In these communities mother-in-law 

 and son-in-law take every precaution to avoid each other's sight, and the explana- 

 tion of the feeling is probably afforded by the Patagonian custom. Orphans, on 

 the other hand, are well looked after ; they are the wards of the whole tribe, and 

 their property is administered with perfect honesty. Married people without 

 children often solemnly adopt a little dog, setting apart for his maintenance a 

 number of horses, as would be done in the case of a son and heir. 



Marriages are always freely contracted without the intervention of the parents 

 on either side. But, like burials, they afford a pretext for sacrifices. On such 

 occasions several mares are killed, and the blood drunk as it flows from the 

 wounds. But during the present generation no instances have occurred of human 

 sacrifices. On the other hand, when a man goes into mourning for the loss of a 

 wife, he burns all he possesses. The dead are sewn up in a poncho and buried 

 either in the recesses of a cave or under a heap of stones like the cairns raised 

 over the graves of the old Gaulish chiefs. They are always deposited in a sitting 

 posture, like that of the Peruvian mummies, and like the bodies of the pre-historic 

 inhabitants of Patagonia. 



So recently as the year 1860 the Tehuel-che still sewed up the bodies of the 

 dead in a fresh leather sack. If the sick person happened to be advanced in 

 years, his friends did not wait for his death, fearing that the rigor mortis might 

 render the operation impossible. An old woman, charged with the funeral 

 arrangements, sat upon the chest of the victim, drew the legs by sheer force up to 

 the trunk at the risk of breaking them, and then fastened the hands to the 

 tibias. The pack, well corded, was then exposed to the sun, and when suffi- 

 ciently dried, stowed away in the sands of the dunes. Such was the force of 

 habit or tradition, gradually transformed to a pious duty, that, in order to bury 

 the dead in accordance with the prescribed forms, they were killed by breaking 

 their bones.* Such a practice forcibly recalls the Procrustean process of legen- 

 dary Greek history, which may have possibly been a reminiscence of analogous 

 usas:es in savage times. 



The Gauchos. 



Till recently the Argentine of the rural districts, undoubtedly descended on 

 the mother's side from the aborigines, scarcely differed in his social usages from 



* Moreno, oj). cit. 



