care admirably calculated to abate the poignancy of their grief; and indeed it would be difficult to decide whether the men drank, or the women mourned most pertinaciously. Whilst this was going on at home, persons of both sexes were chosen to accompany the bones of Ychamenraikin to his family burying-place, and there inter them agreeably to the rites of their country. These ceremonies were observed by the savages before they were instructed in the Christian religion only. Other removals of bones were conducted in exactly the same manner, with the exception of the canopy, which was reserved exclusively for their leaders. The bones of seven Abipones, who had been slain by the Spaniards, were brought home on one day, and skilfully constructed into as many images; hats being placed on their skulls, and clothes on their bodies. These seven skeletons were placed in a savage hut, honoured for nine successive days with mourning and drinking, and thence transported to their graves. Should there be any European who makes little account of sepulture, saying with Virgil, _Cælo tegitur qui non habet urnam_, that man is of a very different way of thinking from the Abipones, who esteem it the greatest misfortune to be left to rot in the open air. Hence amongst them, persons inflamed with the desire of revenge contemptuously cast away the carcasses of their enemies, making fifes and trumpets of their bones, and using their skulls for cups. On the other hand, they honourably inter the smallest bone of one of their friends, paying it every possible mark of respect. We have known savage Guaranies, who, in all their migrations, carried with them little boxes containing the relics of their jugglers, and in them, as in holy preservatives, placed all their hopes. These monuments of savage superstition were at length taken away by the missionaries, and burnt by them in the presence of all. The Guaranies newly brought from the woods to our colonies had no stronger inducement to embrace the Catholic religion than the seeing their countrymen buried by us with honourable ceremonies and a solemn chaunt. But now, after I have discoursed with prolixity on the diseases, physicians, medicines, death, and sepulture of the Abipones, it cannot be thought foreign to the course of my history to treat of the serpents and noxious insects which inflict death on many, and threaten it to all: it will also be agreeable to Europeans to know by what means the Americans defend themselves against serpents, or expel the poison of their wounds. CHAPTER XXVIII. OF THE MORE REMARKABLE SERPENTS.