ARGOS. 461 
We requested that our host would in future CHAP. 
VIII. 
spare no pains to collect all the terra cottas > T - ' -* 
found in the neighbourhood ; promising him 
that we would find purchasers for them in 
England, and patrons who would amply repay 
him for all his expense and trouble, as soon as 
he should give us information that he had suc- 
ceeded in his researches. He said he would 
gladly undertake the work, if it were only to 
afford a proof of his gratitude for the protection 
he enjoyed from the British nation: but we 
received no intelligence from him afterwards. 
It is a most extraordinary fact, that, in all the Io . norance 
elaborate treatises we possess concerning the of ^^ 
sepulchral 
funerals of the Antients, no satisfactory cause use - 
has been assigned for the quantity of earthen 
vases found in Grecian sepulchres. In the View 
of Charon's Ferry* engraved as a Vignette for a 
former Chapter, the Cymba sutilis, fashioned like 
a Welch Coracle, or rather an American canoe 1 , 
is freighted, besides passengers, with empty 
Amphorce : but these are not the sort of vases 
found within any of the tombs; although some- 
times, as symbols of departed souls, they were 
(l) Herodotus (lib. i.) mentions the boats made of skins. The 
Scholiast to Apollonius Rhodius (lib. ii. f. 168) describes them as 
universally in use. 
