Having Pulled Out The Entrails And Peritoneum, They Were Turned Over, And Carefully Examined, Whilst The Women Kept Wailing And Cutting [Note 81 At End Of Para.] Themselves More Violently Than Before, And Even The Men Themselves Lamented Aloud.

When this had been continued for some time, a portion of the omentum was cut off, wrapped in green leaves, and then put carefully away in a bag.

The entrails were now replaced, a handful or two of green leaves thrust in above them, the cloths replaced, and the body again bound up ready for interment.

[Note 81: Also an American custom. - Catlin, vol. i. p. 90. Lacerating the flesh at death was expressly forbidden in the Jewish dispensation. It is practised also in New Zealand. - Vide Dieffenbach.]

A relative of the deceased now jumped up, with his weapons, violently excited, and apparently with the intention of spearing some one; but he was at once restrained by his friends, who informed me that the investigation had satisfied them that the man had not died through the agency of sorcery; if he had, it is imagined that a cicatrice would have been found upon the omentum. Two men now got into the grave, spread a cloth in the bottom, and over that green boughs. Other natives turned the bier round, and lifting up the body, gave it to the two in the grave to lay in its proper position, which was quite horizontal, and with the head to the west [Note 82 at end of para.], the grave being dug east and west: green boughs were now thrown thickly into it, and earth was pushed in by the bystanders with their feet, until a mound had been raised some height above the ground.

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