lue in Egypt was always the color used at the
funerals.

The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul; and that rewards
and punishments were adjudged by Osiris, the king of the Amenti, to the
souls according to their deeds during their mundane life. That the souls
after a period of three thousand years were to return to earth and
inhabit again their former earthly tenements. This was the reason why
they took so much pains to embalm the body.

The Mayas also believed in the immortality of the soul, as I have
already said. Their belief was that after the spirit had suffered during
a time proportioned to their misdeeds whilst on earth, and after having
enjoyed an amount of bliss corresponding to their good actions, they
were to return to earth and live again a material life. Accordingly, as
the body was corruptible, they made statues of stones, terra-cotta, or
wood, in the semblance of the deceased, whose ashes they deposited in a
hollow made for that purpose in the back of the head. Sometimes also in
stone urns, as in the case of Chaacmol. The spirits, on their return to
earth, were to find these statues, impart life to them, and use them as
body during their new existence.

I am not certain but that, as the Egyptians also, they were believers in
transmigration; and that this belief exists yet among the aborigines. I
have noticed that my Indians were unwilling to kill any animal whatever,
even the most noxious and dangerous, that inhabits the ruined monuments.
I have often told them to kill some venomous insect or serpent that may
have happened to be in our way. They invariably refused to do so, but
softly and carefully caused them to go. And when asked why they did not
kill them, declined to answer except by a knowing and mysterious smile,
as if afraid to let a stranger into their intimate beliefs inherited
from their ancestors: remembering, perhaps, the fearful treatment
inflicted by fanatical friars on their fathers to oblige them to forego
what they called the superstitions of their race--the idolatrous creed
of their forefathers.

I have had opportunity to discover that their faith in reincarnation, as
many other time-honored credences, still exists among them, unshaken,
notwithstanding the persecutions and tortures suffered by them at the
hands of ignorant and barbaric _Christians_ (?)

I will give two instances when that belief in reincarnation was plainly
manifested.

The day that, after surmountin