horses, made them run till they were covered with sweat, then hewed them in pieces with the sword, and cast the flesh into the ship. So also they brought forth two oxen, hewed them in pieces, and cast them into the ship. Next they came with a cock and hen, slew them, and cast them also into the ship.” In the meantime the woman who was to die kept going backwards and forwards in and out of the tent. At last they led her away to an object which they had made in the form of the framework of a door—two posts, with a cross piece on the top, or, as is suggested, a substitute for a trilithon. “She set her feet on the palms of men’s hands, stepped up on the frame, and said some words in their tongue, after which they made her stand down. Then they lifted her up a second and third time, and she went through the same ceremony. Now they handed her a hen, the head of which she cut off and cast away, but the body they cast into the ship. I asked my interpreter what it was that the woman had said. He answered, she said the first time, ‘Lo! I see my father and my mother;’ the second time, ‘Lo! here I see seated all my deceased relations;’ the third time, ‘Lo! here I see my master seated in paradise—paradise, beautiful and green, my master surrounded by his men and his menials; he calls for me; bring me to him.’ Thereupon they conveyed her to the ship. She took the bracelets from her arms, and gave them to the crone whom they called ‘the dead man’s angel;’ and the rings from her ankles, and gave them to the two young girls who had attended her, and who were ‘the dead man’s angel’s daughters.’ Then came men with shields and staves, and brought her a beaker of strong drink. She sang a song, and drank it out. Folk said to me that she thereby took leave of her friends. They reached her a second beaker. She took it, and sang a long time. The old hag bade her hasten to empty it, and go into the tent where her dead master was. I watched her; she was out of herself. In attempting to go into the tent she stuck by the head in the space between the tent and the ship. The old hag caught hold of her by the head and dragged her in with her, while the men commenced to beat their shields with the staves, that her shrieks might not be heard, and so frighten other girls, and make them unwilling to die with their lords.” The sequel is too horrible to be given as it stands in the old Arab’s plain-spoken narrative. A cord was finally wound round her neck, at the ends of which two men pulled, while the “dead man’s angel” stabbed her to the heart with a broad-bladed knife. Then the relatives of the dead man set fire to the pile. A storm that was just beginning to rage fanned the flames, and drove them aloft to a great height. A Norseman who was standing by said to Ibn Fozlan “You Arabs are fools. You take the man whom you most have loved and honoured, and put him down into the earth, where vermin and worms devour him. We, on the contrary, burn him up in a