ning in the
Eastern hemisphere or the Polynesian islands. The commonest method was
some form of _inhumation_ in pits, graves, or holes in the ground, in
stone graves or cysts, in mounds, beneath or in houses, or in caves.
_Embalmment_, to a limited extent, was also practised, the corpse being
wrapped in garments and made up into a bundle before being placed in the
earth, a cave, charnel-house, or in a box mounted on a scaffold.
_Surface-burial_ was in use in some districts, the corpse being placed
in a pen, a hollow tree or log, or simply covered with loose earth, or
bark, or rocks forming cairns. In several regions, at various times,
_cremation_ was the rule, or at least a partial burning, the resulting
bones and ashes being preserved by some tribes and scattered by others.
_Aerial sepulture_ is the name given to another method, where the body
was left in the cabin or wigwam, deposited on scaffolds or trees, in
boxes or canoes, sometimes supported by posts, sometimes resting on the
ground, placed in baskets perched on pinnacles of rock or hung to the
branches of trees,--the last being the mode often adopted in the case of
children. Lastly, some nations were accustomed to sink their dead
beneath the water, or turn them adrift in canoes.

It is manifest that many of these practices could not be shown, from the
nature of the case or the limits of space, except by pictures or models;
but certain forms are represented in the great stocking-foot-shaped jars
of coarse earthenware which served as coffins in the Nicaraguan region,
in cinerary urns, in bones and skulls prepared to be kept as a sacred
heirloom in the family, and in various descriptions of mummies, swathed
and unswathed, chiefly from Peru and from caves in Mexico.

It has always been the habit of savage and semi-barbarous people, the
world over, to bury with their dead or destroy at the grave more or less
property which may or may not have belonged to the deceased persons.
Among some of the American Indians this was carried to such an extent as
utterly to impoverish all the relatives, who, in fact, seem to have
accumulated wealth solely for the purpose of funereal display. By a few
tribes, like the Natchez, human sacrifice--forcibly of slaves,
voluntarily on the part of relatives--was enjoined whenever a prominent
man died. In most nations, however, the sacrifices were limited to
horses, dogs, and food-animals, ornaments and implements. It was
believed that in th