the tidal machines. When completed, the mourners will be conveyed in tanks to the top of the hill, and when that is the case, one of my friends remarked, a funeral procession will be quite a pleasant affair, in place of, as at present, a terrible penance to the poor mourners.
The first funeral I witnessed in Colymbia was a dreadful shock to me. There was something so repugnant to all my English ideas respecting the sanctity of death, and the respect due to the corpse of a departed friend, in this grotesque procession up the burning hill, and the unceremonious projection of the body into the horrible smoking cavern, that I could not help expressing my horror and disgust at the whole business to the friend who had brought me there.
"To see the corpse of a beloved friend or relative chucked into the jaws of a fearful hole, as though it were the body of a dead dog, seems to me to be subjecting it to the utmost dishonour. Why not bury your dead in the ground, and mark the spot with a stone, so that you may know where the loved one lies, and occasionally come and pay the tribute of a tear at the spot where all that is mortal of him remains?"
My friend, who had the reputation of being a shrewd man of business, but who, believing his especial forte to be philosophy, had assumed the name of Plato, replied:—
"Your terrestrial prejudices disqualify you from seeing the beauty and appropriateness of our burial custom. You should know that it is generally believed that the early races who inhabited these islands are supposed to have been addicted to cannibalism, a
