Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/785

Rh of quickly disposing of the cast-off human garment; and, again, the habit of the ancient Persian, who invited wild beasts to the feast, and considered their speedy acceptance a special honor; most repulsive of all, some tribes of Tartars, and the Fans, an African people, who take upon themselves the delicate task of disposal—with pleasure, it is said. With this latter group must also be placed the ancient Irish and Briton, and many South American Indians. Most interesting of the practices of "living sepulchres" is that of the Parsees of India, whose famous Towers of Silence are well-arranged buildings where the necessary work is done quickly and unseen of men, by vultures "sent by God" as they say, and the bones preserved in one great central well together.

The most widely extended fashion of forcibly resolving the body into its elements is by burning, which has been in use almost from the beginning of man's life on this planet, and is to-day rapidly growing into favor with enlightened peoples. Before the advent of Christianity it was the nearly universal practice. The Greeks and Romans, the Etrurians, Hindoos, Siamese, Germans, Scandinavians, and Saxons, and many Indian tribes of the Western world, all burned their dead with more or less ceremony, and some of them do still. Certain Australians put the body in a hollow tree, and make of that a funeral pile; the Gualala of California burn the departed to prevent their becoming grizzly bears; and the Semels, another tribe, glorify their chiefs by great pyres heaped with finery and valuables, sometimes several hundred dollars' worth.

To the cremationists must be added many peoples of Asia, among whom the fashion is still in full vigor. Some races, both savage and civilized, sacrifice the living on the funeral pile, the victims being, of course, the helpless wives and servants. Most of them are merciful enough to strangle or otherwise kill the doomed ones, but it was reserved for the "mild and gentle Hindoo" to invent and carry out the most cruel and brutal custom on record.

Of the races who let Nature do the work at her leisure, perhaps the most striking are those who wall up the door and leave the deceased in possession, since this comes the nearest we can hope to get, to taking our riches with us. Such were the ancient Peruvian Incas, whose palaces were closed and deserted with all their treasures in them, although the dried and preserved body took its place with its ancestors in the Great Temple of the Sun, and the dying Eskimo left in his snow hut, with food and light at hand, free to depart when he chose.

Unique among men is one who saves his friends trouble by burying himself. The aged Australian, feeling death approach,