The political and social institutions of the Guanches varied. In some islands hereditary autocracy prevailed; in others the government was elective. In Teneriffe all the land belonged to the chiefs who leased it to their subjects. In Grand Canary suicide was regarded as honourable, and on a chief inheriting, one of his subjects willingly honoured the occasion by throwing himself over a precipice. In some islands polyandry was practised; in others the natives were monogamous. But everywhere the women appear to have been respected, an insult offered any woman by an armed man being a capital offence. Almost all the Guanches used to wear garments of goat-skins, and others of vegetable fibres, which have been found in the tombs of Grand Canary. They had a taste for ornaments, necklaces of wood, bone and shells, worked in different designs. Beads of baked earth, cylindrical and of all shapes, with smooth or polished surfaces, mostly black and red in colour, were chiefly in use. They painted their bodies; the _pintaderas_, baked clay objects like seals in shape, have been explained by Dr Verneau as having been used solely for painting the body in various colours. They manufactured rough pottery, mostly without decorations, or ornamented by means of the finger-nail. The Guanches' weapons were those of the ancient races of south Europe. The polished battle-axe was more used in Grand Canary, while stone and obsidian, roughly cut, were commoner in Teneriffe. They had, besides, the lance, the club, sometimes studded with pebbles, and the javelin, and they seem to have known the shield. They lived in natural or artificial caves in their mountains. In districts where cave-dwellings were impossible, they built small round houses and, according to the Spaniards, they even practised rude fortification. In Palma the old people were at their own wish left to die alone. After bidding their family farewell they were carried to the sepulchral cave, nothing but a bowl of milk being left them. The Guanches embalmed their dead; many mummies have been found in an extreme state of desiccation, each weighing not more than 6 or 7 lb. Two almost inaccessible caves in a vertical rock by the shore 3 m. from Santa Cruz (Teneriffe) are said still to contain bones. The process of embalming seems to have varied. In Teneriffe and Grand Canary the corpse was simply wrapped up in goat and sheep skins, while in other islands a resinous substance was used to preserve the body, which was then placed in a cave difficult of access, or buried under a tumulus. The work of embalming was reserved for a special class, women for female corpses, men for male. Embalming seems not to have been universal, and bodies were often simply hidden in caves or buried.