Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/330

282 to be about a year, being elapsed, the bones are once more inhumed, and the individual to whom they belonged forgotten for ever. Respect and charity for the ashes of the deceased, are not characteristics peculiar to civilized nations, seeing that they are likewise infused into the breast of barbarians; but as those who people the extensive territories of the Andes, and the surrounding plains, are innumerable, there are not wanting among them Massagetans, who pierce with arrows their expiring companions; Romans, who cast them into the rivers; Troglodytes, who abandon the dead bodies, or cover them with stones; and Issedonians, who devour them.

Strabo asserts, that the Bactrians delivered up their living old men to be devoured by dogs; and Eusebius testifies the same of the Hyrcanians: an inhumanity which the learned marquis of St. Aubin regards as incredible. In our opinion, that which father Figueroa relates of the Cocamas, and other barbarians residing on the same territory, is not less so. He says, that when a child is born, the parents deliberate whether they shall grant it life, or, on the other hand, put it to death, to the end that they may not be burthened with children, or leave any one behind them to lament their loss. If the latter resolve be taken, they bury them alive with the secundine, unless one of the progenitors, or any other person, approach