In recent times, the missionaries are trying to put a stop to cremation in Alaska. This is a great mistake; and they will find it out before long. The missionaries should endeavor to do what the English in India have done and are doing still—attempt to substitute scientific incineration for the crude ancient method of burning the dead on pyres. And in this undertaking, I am sure, they would have the support of the most intelligent among the Indians. The natives of Alaska, no doubt, learned by some terrible, never-to-be-forgotten experience the dangers and evils of burial in the ground; and, although their method of obviating these dangers and evils is rude and barbaric, the principle which impelled them to adopt cremation is right. The first Caucasian who was cremated in the United States was Colonel Henry Laurens, who was the president of the first Congress, which convened at Philadelphia in 1774; he was also a member of the military family of General Washington. Laurens was of Huguenot descent, born in Charleston, S. C., in 1724, and eminent as a statesman before and during the Revolutionary War. He was educated in one of the best universities of Europe, and although following the vocation of a merchant during many years, he achieved great distinction as a writer on political topics; his pamphlets on the public questions of the time received much consideration. Appointed minister to Holland, he was taken captive on the voyage thither by a British man-of-war, and was imprisoned for some time in the Tower as a rebel. Among his visitors there was a friend of other years, Edmund Burke, by whose influence he was finally set free. One of Laurens’ daughters had, when a child, apparently died of small-pox, but, being placed near an open window, she revived. Since this occurrence, the colonel lived in constant fear of being buried alive, and therefore requested his daughters, by an injunction and detailed directions given in his will, to burn his body after death; his fervent wish was carried out in his garden at Charleston, S. C., in 1792. The second to be burned was Mr. Henry Barry, who lived and was cinerated in the vicinity of Marion, S. C.