still carrying on her back the bones of her late husband, which are now removed and placed in a covered box, which is nailed or otherwise fastened to a post twelve feet high.  Her conduct as a faithful widow is next highly eulogized, and the ceremony of her manumission is completed by one man powdering on her head the down of birds and another pouring on it the contents of a bladder of oil.  She is then at liberty to marry again or lead a life of single blessedness, but few of them, I believe, wish to encounter the risk attending a second widowhood.  The men are condemned to a similar ordeal, but they do not bear it with equal fortitude, and numbers fly to distant quarters to avoid the brutal treatment which custom has established as a kind of religious rite.

Figure 10 is an ideal sketch of the cremation according to the description given.

Perhaps a short review of some of the peculiar and salient points of this narrative may be permitted.

It is stated that the corpse is kept nine days after death—­certainly a long period of time, when it is remembered that Indians as a rule endeavor to dispose of their dead as soon as possible.  This may be accounted for on the supposition that it is to give the friends and relatives an opportunity of assembling, verifying the death, and of making proper preparations for the ceremony.  With regard to the verification of the dead person, William Sheldon[51] gives an account of a similar custom which was common among the Caraibs of Jamaica, and which seems to throw some light upon the unusual retention of deceased persons by the tribe in question, although it most be admitted that this is mere hypothesis: 

They had some very extraordinary customs respecting deceased persons.  When one of them died, it was necessary that all his relations should see him and examine the body in order to ascertain that he died a natural death.  They acted so rigidly on this principle, that if one relative remained who had not seen the body all the others could not convince that one that the death was natural.  In such a case the absent relative considered himself as bound in honor to consider all the other relatives as having been accessories to the death of the kinsman, and did not rest until he had killed one of them to revenge the death of the deceased.  If a Caraib died in Martinico or Guadaloupe and but his relations lived in St. Vincents, it was necessary to summon them to see the body, and several months sometimes elapsed before it could be finally interred.  When a Caraib died he was immediately painted all over with roucou, and had his mustachios and the black streaks in his face made with a black paint, which was different from that used in their lifetime.  A kind of grave was then dug in the carbet where he died, about 4 feet square and 6 or 7 feet deep.  The body was let down in it, when sand was thrown in, which reached to the knees, and the body was placed in it in