These methods of accentuating sorrow, however, were light when compared with the tortures that adult sons were wont to inflict upon themselves on the loss of their father. It was their duty first of all to hide themselves, fasting, in their huts for two days. This effected, it was customary to point a number of sticks and to transfix the arms with these from the wrist to the shoulder, with an interval of not more than an inch between each. In this porcupine-like condition they proceeded either to a wood or to a hill, bearing in their hands sharpened stakes. By means of these each would dig out a hole in the earth sufficiently deep to cover him to the height of the breast, and in this custom demanded him to remain during a whole night. On the next day the mourners rose up from their uncomfortable holes, and met together in a special hut that was set apart for the ceremonial purposes. Here they pulled the sticks from their arms, and remained for a fortnight, partaking of only the scantiest nourishment. After which they were at liberty to rejoin their comrades, and to resume the comparatively even tenor of their normal existence.
The Charrúas afford one of the rare instances of a race who knew no religion. They neither worshipped a benevolent divinity nor endeavoured to propitiate a malignant spirit. They were, nevertheless, superstitious up to a certain point, and dreaded to leave their huts during the night. There is no doubt that some vague belief in an after-existence must have been implanted in their lowly minds. Although they do not seem ever to have referred openly to the belief, the sole fact of the burial of the dead man's arms in the same grave as the corpse is sufficient proof of their supposition that the weapons would be needed in some half-imagined and dim place beyond. But neither priest nor magician was in their midst to stimulate their wonderings on the point.
The highest degree of science or intellect, as a matter of fact, was represented by the medicine-men with their simple and mistakenly practical remedy. The race had no acquaintance with either music, games, dancing, or with ordinary conversation as understood amongst more civilised beings. In matters of personal adornment the Charrúas were equally unsophisticated. A few ostrich feathers in the hair constituted the beginning and the end of the men's costume; the sole garment of the women was a loin-cloth. Of too dull a temperament to discover even the simplest pleasures that the majority of races contrive to extract from their existence, the sole luxury in which these folk indulged was the bathing in the streams of the country. But this recreation was limited to the midsummer months: during all the other periods of the year they refrained entirely from ablutions.