When a member of the family dies, the body is not removed for final disposal by the door which the living are accustomed to use, but a plank is torn from the side or back of the dwelling, through which the corpse is passed, after which the place is at once carefully made whole. This, they say, is to prevent the spirit of the defunct from finding its way back again, and thus bringing ill luck upon the living. A still more superstitious and savage custom prevails among some of these ignorant natives. If a person dies in a cabin, it is held that the place becomes sacred to his spirit, and therefore is unfit for the living. To avoid this difficulty the dying are passed out of the domicile through some temporary hole into the open air to breathe their last, so that neither the house nor the threshold may be sacrificed to the spirit of the dead. Slaves, besides poor widows and orphans, when they die, are often disposed of in the most summary and unfeeling manner, being exposed in the woods, or cast into the sea as food for the fishes. In this connection we remember that the highly civilized and rich Parsees of Bombay do not hesitate to give the dead bodies of their cherished ones to the vultures, in those terrible Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill. The ceremonies which follow all funerals among these aborigines are peculiar affairs, and for the carrying out of which each person saves more or less of his worldly effects to leave after death. As soon as the body of the deceased is disposed of, then commences what is here called a “potlatch,” signifying a “big feast,” conducted very much after the style of the New Zealanders on a similar occasion. Everybody is invited and a free spread or feast provided, the same being kept up for several days and nights, so long, indeed, as the purchasing power lasts. Whiskey is freely dispensed, when it can be had, but if not obtainable, as it is a contraband article, then “hoochenoo,” made from flour and molasses well fermented, takes its place, being equally intoxicating and maddening. Dancing, wailing, singing, fighting, and grave indecencies follow each other, until the means to keep up the potlatch left by the deceased are exhausted, and his surviving family oftentimes impoverished.