supposition that receives confirmation from the discovery of gnawed human bones in various parts of the land, in connection with the rude flint implements of an early and barbarous people. As the Colymbians advanced in civilization, they became possessed with an extreme horror of assimilating any portion of the mortal remains of their fellow-creatures. They knew that if they buried their dead in the earth, the corpses might be dug up and preyed upon by some of the wild animals of the land, which might afterwards be used as food, or even if they escaped this calamity, still the decomposed elements of the body might nourish the plants that grow in the soil, which might subsequently be used as food, and thus we should be eating our friends and relatives at second hand; and in the bread-fruit we ate, or the juice of the orange we sucked, we might be partaking of elements that originally entered into the composition of our deceased fellow-men. In order to avoid such a horrible banquet, it was resolved to employ the means offered to us by nature for effecting the instantaneous and perfect combustion of the dead, and insuring the complete destruction of the material portions of our fellow-countrymen. The gases into which these are transferred issuing from the burning crater in the form of flame and smoke, as you just now saw, are wafted high into the air, and cannot be used in the nourishment of the plants that supply us with food. We thus avoid the horrible iniquity of preying upon our fellow-men. As for your idea of finding any pleasure in visiting the spot where the bodies of our friends are interred, that is mere sentiment. In your grave-yards you do not expose the bodies of your dead, but cover them up with many feet of earth; so
