think I should obtain that favour you wish me?  I have not above an hour to live.  Pray, says I, do not entertain such a melancholy thought; I hope it will not be so, but that I shall enjoy your company for many years.  I wish you, says he, a long life; but for me, my days are at an end, for I must be buried this day with my wife.  This is a law which our ancestors established in this land, and always observed it inviolably.  The living husband is interred with the dead wife, and the living wife with the dead husband.  Nothing can save me; every one must submit to this law.  While he was entertaining me with an account of this barbarous custom, the very hearing of which frightened me cruelly, his kindred, friends, and neighbours, came in a body to assist at the funeral.  They put on the corpse the woman’s richest apparel, as if it had been her wedding-day, and dressed her with all her jewels; then they put her into an open coffin, and, lifting it up, began their march to the place of burial.  The husband walked at the head of the company, and followed the corpse.  They went up to an high mountain, and, when they came thither, took up a great stone, which covered the mouth of a very deep pit, and let down the corpse with all its apparel and jewels.  Then the husband, embracing his kindred and friends, suffered himself to be put into another open coffin without resistance, with a pot of water and seven little loaves, and was let down in the same manner as his wife.  The mountain was pretty long, and reached to the sea.  The ceremony being ever, they covered the hole again with the stone, and returned.

It is needless, gentlemen, for me to tell you that I was the only melancholy spectator of this funeral; whereas the rest were scarcely moved at it, the thing being customary to them.  I could not forbear speaking my thoughts of this matter to the king:  Sir, says I, I cannot enough admire the strange custom in this country of burying the living with the dead.  I have been a great traveller, and seen many countries, but never heard of so cruel a law.  What do you mean, Sindbad? says the king; it is a common law.  I shall be interred with the queen my wife, if she die first.  But, sir, says I, may I presume to demand of your majesty, if strangers be obliged to observe this law?  Without doubt, replies the king, (smiling at the occasion of my question,) they are not exempted, if they be married in this island.  I went home very melancholy at this answer, from fear of my wife dying first, and lest I should be interred alive with her, which occasioned me very mortifying reflections.  But there was no remedy; I must have patience, and submit to the will of God.  I trembled, however, at every little indisposition of my wife:  but, alas! in a little time my fears came upon me all at once; for she fell sick, and died in a few days.  You may judge of my sorrow:  to be interred alive seemed to me as deplorable an end as to be devoured by cannibals.  But I must submit; the king and