BY OTIS T. MASON.

Whenever the word mummy is mentioned almost everybody thinks of Egypt and the ancient embalmers, with their tedious processes and costly ceremonials. The term does include the Egyptian prepared bodies, but it does not exclude some found elsewhere. Indeed, in Washington, there will be seen in close proximity, in the Smithsonian building, an exceedingly dry company, made up of individuals from Alaska, Arizona, Mexico, Kentucky, Peru, and Egypt.

Whoever has marked the tender solicitude with which the things around us seem to beckon us in this way or in that will understand that even the disposal of the dead has been influenced by such suggestions. Passing through a dense forest one seems to hear the branches and undergrowth say: “Come this way, pass along here, we are opening to make way for you.” Well, it is so in every human art; natural objects supply the materials, the tools, and suggest the simplest forms. There can be no potters where there is no clay, no chipped arrow heads where there is no stone to flake, no wood carving in the arctic regions where grows no timber. Yet the good people in all these places have arts, they make excellent baskets in which they carry water and boil their meat, polished spearheads and axes of volcanic stone, and most delicate carvings in ivory or antler.

As to the disposal of the dead in different regions and ages, all we have space to say is that the voices of nature around each people have told them how to perform this sad rite. In the frozen regions, where the ground is never thawed, no graves are dug. By the seaside the primitive fisherman is launched upon the wide expanse in his own canoe. In rocky regions cairns and cists conceal the wasting form. On the soft prairie mounds cover the dead out of sight. In those arid regions where the rainfall does not affect the atmosphere to any extent the process of desiccation takes place more rapidly than chemical changes. The water, which forms the greater part of the human body, soon removes and leaves but a few pounds of bones, dried flesh and skin. This may be called natural mummification, the process of which is aided either by extreme cold, extreme aridity, or preservative elements in the soil.

In the National Museum there is the body of a little boy, lying on his back, his feet drawn up, and all sorts of curious relics hanging in the case with him. The body was discovered in one of the cliff ruins of the CaÑon de Chelly, Arizona. The particular ruin referred to is on a benched recess, seventy-five feet above the caÑon, and extends backward about thirty feet. The ancient Pueblo people, driven by some invading force, constructed their cliff houses along only a part of this bench. About fifty feet from the walls Mr. Thomas Kearn found a little oven-like cist composed of angular bowlders laid in clay. The rooflet consisted of sticks supporting stones and clay. At the bottom lay the little child, and the remains of other burials, together with grave deposits. Here, in this last resting place, the waters escaped so quickly and so quietly from the body that even the form of life was not disturbed nor any chemical changes awakened. So perfectly dried is this little fellow that even the coatings of the eye remain. This is natural embalmment by desiccation simply. In the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, are dried bodies from Mexico, preserved in the same manner. Around them were their clothing and utensils, silent and patient watchers, waiting all these centuries to give in evidence as to how those dead people dressed, ate, drank, worked, and warred.

In the palmy days of our grandparents there was a desiccated body discovered in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. This, also, has had the good fortune, after many peregrinations, to find its way into the Smithsonian. Now, Mammoth Cave is a damp place, but the earth accumulated on the floor is in places full of nitrous and other preservative salts. Indeed, the Kentucky cave subject may be called a natural pickle.

To Mr. William H. Dall we are indebted for bringing to light mummies from the frozen regions. At the time of their discovery by the Russians, the Aleuts of Unalashka had a process of mummification peculiar to themselves. Mr. Dall informs us that they eviscerated the bodies of those held in honor, removed the fatty matter, placed them for some time in running water, and then lashed them into as compact a bundle as possible. A line was placed around the neck and under the knees, to draw them up to the chin. If any part stuck out, the bones were broken so as to facilitate the consolidation. After this the body was thoroughly dried and packed in a wooden crate, wrapped round and round with seal, sea-otter, and other precious furs, enough to make a fashionable belle’s head swim. Over these were wrapped coarser skins, waterproof cloth of intestines, and fine grass mats. This crate was slung to upright poles, or hung, like a wall-pocket, to a peg driven into a crevice in some cave. In 1874 Captain E. Hennig, of the Alaska Commercial Company’s service, found in a cave on the island of Kagamil, near Unalashka, a number of these framed mummies, all but two of which the company presented to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Egypt of America for mummies is Peru. Scarcely a museum in the world is without its dried dogs, guinea pigs, parrots, and human beings wrapped in costly cloths, and the last mentioned wearing the greatest profusion of gold and silver jewelry. Along with these bodies are found corn, beans, peanuts; pottery, gourds, and silver vases; pillows, haversacks and masks; knives, war clubs and spearheads; needles, distaffs, spindles, work-baskets and musical cradles. Thousands and thousands of the most interesting things turn up, almost as expressive of ancient Peruvian life as was the library of Sennacherib, exhumed by Layard at Kouyunjik, of Assyrian life.

Beyond the care of the Peruvians and Bolivians in the clothing and encysting of the dead, it is almost certain that they left them to the atmosphere to manipulate. The work was done most effectually. Nothing can be dryer than a Peruvian mummy. It is perfectly useless to dust the cases containing them, and those who handle them are in a steady sneeze, as though invisible spirits, filled with indignation, held impalpable snuff-boxes to the nose. It is still more wonderful that insects have not done their destructive work upon these bodies. The wrappings doubtless were so securely made as to prevent their inroads, and must have contained some substance to keep them away.

In the National Museum, finally, are two Egyptian mummies. It is hard to tell how they got into such outlandish boxes and mountings. There they stand, nailed and screwed into narrow, white boxes, side by side, with mouths open, as if Pompeian convulsions had seized and embalmed them by instantaneous mummification just as the curtain was falling on a grand duet. Now, these two bodies were really embalmed (embalsamed); all the other mummies were simply dried up.

The Egyptians, Peruvians, and perhaps the Alaskans preserved the bodies as integral parts of the individual, that would be needed again. The others simply dried up, their depositors cherishing no belief in the resurrection of the body.