At the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, Paris, on All-souls-day, they
"still put cakes and sweetmeats on the graves; and in Brittany the
peasants that night do not forget to make up the fire and leave the
fragments of the supper on the table for the souls of the dead." (Ibid..
p. 351.)
The Indian prays to the spirits of his forefathers; the Chinese religion
is largely "ancestor-worship;" and the rites paid to the dead ancestors,
or lares, held the Roman family together." ("Anthropology," p. 351.)
We find the Indian practice of burying the dead in a sitting posture in
use among the Nasamonians, tribe of Libyans. Herodotus, speaking of the
wandering tribes of Northern Africa, says, "They bury their dead
according to the fashion of the Greeks. . . . They bury them sitting,
and are right careful, when the sick man is at the point of giving up
the ghost, to make him sit, and not let him die lying down."
The dead bodies of the caciques of Bogota were protected from
desecration by diverting the course of a river and making the grave in
its bed, and then letting the stream return to its natural course.
Alaric, the leader of the Goths, was secretly buried in the same way.
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