368 
Burial of a Stranger Indian, 
several thongs, and a flask fllled with water. I joined Mr. Youd, who 
did not seem to be over-confident that his orders would be obeyed unless 
he himself were present at the funeral. As we reached the spot, the two 
sons were digging the trough-like grave, but the wife and daughter were 
sitting on each side of the corpse and in a whining tone singing those 
peculiar affecting and monotonous songs of lamentation, all the while 
that they carefully drove away every insect that settled on the body, 
and when the sun cast its rays upon the face, covered it with some twigs. 
After the sons had completed their labours the grave was lined with 
palm-fronds and the corpse placed in an almost sitting position with 
the head to the west. For his future use they supplied him in the grave 
with the objects brought along by the wife and daughter, to which was 
also added a drinking cup and his knife. The man had died in a high 
fever, and being naturally continually tormented with thirst he had 
bidden his people shortly before his death to give him a flask full of water 
in the grave, so that he might quench his thirst on the long journey to 
his friends who had gone before. His relatives gave him the strips of 
leather to tie the Kanaima to a tree with, should he chance to meet him 
on the way, for this individual likewise here was the cause of the death. 
After the corpse had been carefully covered with palm-fronds, the grave 
was closed in to the accompanying din of howling grief and a large fire 
lighted on top; the hammock was not burnt as at Nappi, but hung up on 
a tree close by, where it would rot into pieces. Several half-tattered 
hammocks, hanging from the neighbouring trees, whence they swayed 
hither and thither in the wind, indicated the presence of several bodies 
already buried here. 
998. Although for a long time past it had been a lively ivisli of mine 
to get hold of some skulls and skeletons for the Anatomical Museum in 
Berlin, the love and respect which the Indians pay to the remains of those 
departed, as well as their conviction that it is a very serious crime to 
disturb the latter, had pi evented my gratifying it even up to the present. 
The custom of burying the dead in the houses made a nocturnal robbery 
impossible, but in Mr. Youd’s arrangements an opportunity now offered 
itself of gaining my object on our return from Roraima. The habit 
adopted at every occurrence of a death, as soon as the relatives own a 
gun, of notifying the same to the inhabitants with three shots has been 
learnt by the Macusis from the coloured people on the Essequibo. 
[End of Volume One.] 
