was a stone enclosure about four
feet high, and the same in diameter, which was intended as a sort of
charnel-house, and was then filled with skulls and bones, whitening in
the sun. I moved to this place, and began examining the skulls.

The Indians, in digging the grave, used a crowbar and machete, and
scooped out the loose earth with their hands. As the work proceeded, I
heard the crowbar enter something with a cracking, tearing sound: it
had passed through a human skull. One of the Indians dug it out with
his hands, and, after they had all examined and commented upon it,
handed it to the mayoral, who gave it to me. They all knew whose skull
it was. It was that of a woman who had been born and brought up, and
who had died among them, and whom they had buried only the last dry
season, but little more than a year before. The skull was laid upon the
pile, and the Indians picked out the arms and legs, and all the smaller
bones. Below the ribs, from the back downward, the flesh had not
decayed, but dried up and adhered to the bones, which, all hanging
together, they lifted out and laid upon the pile. All this was done
decently and with respect.

As I stood by the enclosure of bones, I took up different skulls, and
found that they were all known and identified. The campo santo had been
opened but about five years, and every skull had once sat, upon the
shoulders of an acquaintance.

The graves were all on one side, and on the other no dead had been
buried. I suggested to the mayoral, that by beginning on the farther
side, and burying in order, every corpse would have time to decay and
become dust before its place was wanted for another, which he seemed to
think a good idea, and communicated it to the Indians, who stopped
their work, looked at him and at me, and then went on digging. I added,
that in a few years the bones of the friend they were about burying,
and his own, and those of all the rest of them, would be pulled and
handled like those on the pile, which, also, he communicated to them,
and with the same effect. In the mean time I had overhauled the
skulls, and placed on the top two which I ascertained to be those of
full-blooded Indians, intending to appropriate and carry them off at
the first convenient opportunity.

The Indians worked as slowly as if each was digging his own grave, and
at length the husband of the deceased came out, apparently to hurry
them. He was bare-headed, had long black hair hanging do