Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

156 BURIAL — CEREMONIES. trees, upon which earth is laid. His favourite horse is after^ wards killed. It is held at the grave while a man knocks it on the head with one of the balls of the deceased. When dead, it is skinned and stuffed, then, supported by sticks (or set up) upon its legs, with the head propped up, as if looking at the grave. Sometimes more horses than one are killed. At the funeral of a cacique four horses are sacrificed, and one is set up at each corner of the burial place. The clothes and other effects belonp'ing: to the deceased are burned : and to finish all, a feast is made of the horses' flesh. But there are also other modes of disposing of dead bodies : and as I am certain that at least two of them are practised by the Patagonians of the present day, and we are assured by Falkner that other methods, one of which was carrying them into the desert by the sea-coast, were customary in his time, 1 shall here repeat what he says on the subject (p. 118). " The burial of the dead and the superstitious reverence paid to their memory, are attended with great ceremony. When an Indian dies, one of the most distinguished women among them is immediately chosen to make a skeleton of his body which is done by cutting out the entrails, which they burn to ashes, dissecting the flesh from the bones as clean as possible, and then burying them under ground till the remaining flesh is entirely rotted off, or till they are removed (which must be within a year after the interment, but is sometimes within two months) to the proper burial-place of their ancestors. " This custom is strictly observed by the Molu-che, Taluhet, and Diuihet,* but the Chechehet and Tehuelhet, or Patago- nians, place the bones on high, upon canes or twigs woven together, to dry and whiten with the sun and rain. " During the time that the ceremony of making the skeleton lasts, the Indians, covered with long mantles of skins, and their faces blackened with soot, walk round the tent, with long poles or lances in their hands, singing in a mournful tone of voice, and striking the ground, to frighten away the Valichus, * The Taluhet, Chechehet, and Diuihet, were tribes of Puel-che.