They formerly dressed their heads with black moss on those solemn occasions; and the ground adjacent to the place of interment, they now beat with laurel-brushes, the women having their hair disheveled: the first of which customs seems to be derived from the Hebrew custom of wearing sack-cloth at their funeral solemnities, and on other occasions, when they afflicted their souls before God—to which divine writ often alludes, in describing the blackness of the skies: and the laurel being an ever-green, is a lively emblem of the eternity of the human soul, and the pleasant state it enters into after death, according to antiquity. They beat it on the ground, to express their sharp pungent grief; and, perhaps, to imitate the Hebrew trumpeters for the dead, in order to make as striking a sound as they possibly can on so doleful an occasion. Though the Hebrews had no positive precept that obliged the widow to mourn the death of her husband, or to continue her widowhood, for any time; yet the gravity of their tempers, and their scrupulous nicety of the law of purity, introduced the observance of those modest and religious customs, as firmly under the penalty of shame, as if they bore the sanction of law[LI]. In imitation of them, the Indians have copied so exactly, as to compel the widow to act the part of the disconsolate dove, for the irreparable loss of her mate. Very different is the custom of other nations:—the Africans, when any of their head-men die, kill all their slaves, their friends that were dearest to them, and all their wives whom they loved best, that they may accompany and serve them, in the other world, which is a most diabolical Ammonitish sacrifice of human blood. The East-India widows may refuse to be burned on their husbands funeral piles, with impunity, if they become prostitutes, or public women to sing and dance at marriages, or on other occasions of rejoicing. How superior {188} is the virtuous custom of the savage Americans, concerning female chastity during the time of their widowhood? Footnote LI: Theodosius tells us, Lib. I. Legum de fecundis nuptiis, that women were infamous by the civil law, who married a second time before a year, or at least ten months were expired.