hooked his body out of the river. But it was now headless. Then they knew, and the missionary also knew, that now the other owned five heads.
The reason why only the skulls are preserved is that this is comparatively easy. The body itself decays and moulders, and is thus not only difficult to preserve but also has the repulsive properties of soft corrupting flesh, whereas it is always easy to keep the skull. But even that may be felt too cumbrous, and the North American Indian contented himself with a scalp as a trophy; and the ancient Irish chief extracted the brain of his slain enemy, mixed it with chalk, rolled it into a ball, and so preserved a trophy of his prowess.
Jehu had the seventy sons of Ahab beheaded in Samaria and set up in two heaps at the entrance of the palace of Jezreel, and I have seen a photograph of such piles before the doorway of the Bey of Tunis. The last exhibition of heads as a decoration was over Temple Bar, when those of the Jacobite rebels of 1746 were set up there on iron rods. They remained there till 1772, when one of them fell down in a storm, and the others soon followed. Previous to the Rebellion of 1745, for about thirty years, Temple Bar exhibited
