Maj. J. W. POWELL,
_In charge of Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution_
_The wisest of beings tells us that it is better to go to the House
of Mourning than to that of laughter. And those who have well consider
d the grounds he bad for thus his judgment will not by the title of
this book (as melancholy as it appears) be affrighted from the
perusing it.
What we read to have been and still to be the custom of some nations
to make sepulchres the repositories of their greatest riches is (I am
sure) universally true in a moral sense however it may be thought in
the literal there being never a grave but what conceals a treasure
though all have not the art to discover it I do not here invite the
covetous miser to disturb the dead who can frame no idea of treasure
distinct from gold and silver but him who knows that wisdom and virtue
are the true and sole riches of man. Is not truth a treasure think
you? Which yet Democritus assures us is buried in a deep pit or grave
and he bad reason for whereas we meet elsewhere with nothing but pain
and deceit we no sooner look down into a grave but truth faceth us and
tells us our own._--MURET