The South American savages run no risks from the putrefying remains of their dead. The Orinoco tribes fasten them by a rope to the trunk of a tree on the shore and sink the body in the river. In the course of four and twenty hours the skeleton is picked perfectly clean by the fish. Bones alone are reverenced in this part of the world. The inhabitants of the Pampas and other South American tribes bury only the bones of the dead, the flesh having been first removed from them: an operation performed by the women. While the work of dissection is going on, the men walk round the tent, covered with long mantles, singing a mournful tune, and striking the ground with their spears, to drive away the evil spirits. The bones, being prepared, are packed up in a hide, and conveyed on a favourite horse of the deceased to the family burial-place, sometimes hundreds of miles distant. Being disposed in their natural order and tied together so as to form a skeleton, they are clothed in the deceased’s best attire, and ornamented with beads and feathers. The skeleton is placed in a sitting posture, with the carcases of horses, killed—in order that their master may ride them in the next world—in a pit or grave, which is then covered over. Among all the customs of unenlightened mankind, there are few more remarkable than this provision for the material wants of the dead in another state of existence. In all ages, and in most parts of the world, the dead man has been sent to his long home, furnished with servants, horses, dogs, domestic utensils—every article of physical comfort and enjoyment he is supposed to require. Money has been supplied for his journey, and even (as among the Jukati of Siberia) food has been put into his coffin, ‘that he may not hunger on his road to the dwelling of souls.’ ‘As if,’ quaintly remarks an ancient Spanish traveller, ‘the infernal regions were a long way off.’ But in every instance the corpse has been so dealt with as to prevent injury to those who still exist.