But whether
that mournful burthen, and treble calling out after
Absalom, had any reference unto the last conclamation,
and triple valediction, used by other nations, we hold
but a wavering conjecture.
Civilians make sepulture but of the law of nations,
others do naturally found it and discover it also in
animals. They that are so thick-skinned as still to
credit the story of the Phoenix, may say something for
animal burning. More serious conjectures find some
examples of sepulture in elephants, cranes, the sepul-
chral cells of pismires, and practice of bees,--which
civil society carrieth out their dead, and hath exequies,
if not interments.
CHAPTER II.
THE solemnities, ceremonies, rites of their cremation
or interment, so solemnly delivered by authors, we
shall not disparage our reader to repeat. Only the last
and lasting part in their urns, collected bones and ashes,
we cannot wholly omit or decline that subject, which
occasion lately presented, in some discovered among us.
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