with valuable matters, such as cutting weapons. Amongst such a primitive people false witness is unknown, and covetousness only exists in the presence of travellers who have well-stocked ships or sledges. But the Esquimaux do not keep a Sabbath of rest every seventh day; how, indeed, could they, when many of their days have a duration of six weeks-according to the Hebrew computation, which measures the day by sunsets. It is clear, then, that what many persons designate Christian virtues do not necessarily depend upon a knowledge of Jehovah, of Jesus, or of both.

The North American Indian appears to have been, when first discovered, wholly without any distinct religious faith. It is true that some authors have described him as reverencing his manitou, or great spirit, and speaking of some happy hunting ground to which his soul will pass after death; but I am unable to find any reliable testimony in support of this poetic notion. To me it seems that the Red Indian is nothing more than one of a ferocious tribe of men, who, having to subsist by the chase alone, bestows all his thoughts upon getting meat, and driving off his neighbours from interfering in his lands. To such an one a teeming population is equivalent to a diminution in the supply of game, and this, again, involves starvation. With him, therefore, the murder of his neighbours becomes a matter of necessity, one which may be regarded by him as an absolute virtue, a matter of public policy, and essentially a moral duty; and as he is little superior to a tiger or a cat, he does not scruple to add cruelty to homicide. He who has seen a carnivorous beast seize its living prey, disable, without killing it, and then lie by and watch its victim, rising now and again to give it a shake, or a pat with its claw, can well understand how a Blackfoot Indian might gloat over a dying Delaware, or a Mandan torture an Iroquois when he had the chance, each

regarding the other as men consider wasps and hornets. Yet, though without religion, the Indian is not without fear. He is terrified by strange noises, and by weird sights; there is a being whom he dreads; and there is in every tribe a "medicine man," who is supposed to have supernatural power, and to be able to attract good or to banish evil fortune from the chief and his people. Practically, the Red Indian is as superstitious about lucky and unlucky days as was the Hebrew David and the Persian Haman, and, prior to the starting of - an expedition, the diviner is consulted, who may, possibly, answer in the words of the Lord (?) of Judah, "let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines" (2 Sam. v. 24).

But though without religion, in the usual acceptation of the word, the Indians were not, when first the white man knew them, wholly without ritual, or what has been designated a sacred ceremony. The celebration to which we refer occurred every year, was conducted by a definite set of actors, and was attended to with wonderful reverence. A full account of such ceremony is given by G. Catlin, in a work entitled, O KEE PA (Trübner, London, 1867). In it figures a mystic messenger, who comes to demand the initiation of the young men of the tribe who have attained a fighting age; tents are then prepared, and men and women are duly painted and otherwise disguised to represent buffaloes and bugbears, the bad spirit, etc.; the main intention of the whole being to test the courage, strength, and endurance of the young men by frightful tortures, which are too disgusting for description here. At the end of the trial, however, each votary sacrifices a joint of the little finger of one hand to the bad spirit. At this feast some doll-like effigies are used to mark the "mystery" tent.

Amongst barbarians like these are, it will readily be imagined that such virtues as chastity and charity have no existence, that successful theft ennobles the robber, and that the slaughter of an enemy, either by treachery or in fair fight, is regarded as a proof of courage, much as it was amongst the Spartan Greeks. Polygamy is simply a matter of wealth and arrangement, and women are purchased and treated like slaves. It is the man's business to hunt and fight, it is the woman's duty to make the best or the most of the spoils of the chase.

Yet, with this general absence of all religion, there appears to be, here and there, a reverence for certain strange phenomena of nature-such as hot or bubbling fountains, sulphur springs, steaming geysers, and curious rocks, like the celebrated pipe-stone rock in the Sioux territory. From this all pipes ought to be made, there being as much of orthodoxy in such bowls amongst the Indians as there is in an "Agnus Dei" amongst Christian papists. There is, too, a reverence for the dead occasionally to be met with, but it cannot be said to amount to worship. In some instances, but I do not find that the custom is general, a man is interred with his horse, weapons, and medicine bag, as if it was expected that he would live beyond the tomb, and require in his other state of existence that which he wanted in this.

What we have said of the North American aborigines applies with equal, if not with greater, force to those of the South.

From what the savage redskins are, and have been, during the last two or three centuries, a transition to what they have been in the past is very natural; and, whilst making the step, the philosopher will be reminded of the observation made by some profound observer, to the effect "go where you will, no matter how savage the nation, you will be sure to find the

remains of a previous empire, nation, or civilization." Vast forests, scarcely yet fully explored, cover ancient cities in Ceylon and Central America alike, and men, who toiled to build vast temples, towers, palaces, and fortresses, are replaced by wild animals. In the Bashan of Palestine, primeval houses of stone still stand, where scarcely a resident is to be found, and the present inhabitants are far inferior to the ancient race that built these enduring dwellings. Thus the Abbé Domenech writes (Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, London, Longman, 1860), vol. I., p. 353— "From Florida to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the American soil is strewn with gigantic ruins of temples, tumuli, entrenched camps, fortifications, towers, villages, towers of observation, gardens, wells, artificial meadows, and high roads of the most remote antiquity."

Without entering closely into the nature of the antiquities discovered, we may state that they comprise pyramids, cones, obelisks, hills surrounded by a deep vallum, like that adjoining Salisbury, and earthen constructions analogous to that at Avebury. There is evidence that the artificial erections, which were so built as to be visible from an enormous distance, were designed, possibly, as cairns, or memorials of the dead, but also as spots for sacrificial offerings, resembling those called high places in Ancient Palestine, the tumulus over Patroclus, and the Scythian mounds in the Crimea. The altars which have been discovered are made of baked clay or stone, and have the shape of large basins, varying in length from nineteen inches to seventeen yards, but generally about two yards and a-half. Under and around the altars calcined human bones were found, and sometimes a whole skeleton was met with in the tumulus, as if a sacrifice of men attended the funeral rites, as we learn from Homer that it did, before Troy, when Achilles directed the obsequies of his friend Patroclus. Cremation, as well as sepulture, was

adopted, and with the dead, ornaments, arms, and other objects, which belonged in life to the departed, were buried; amongst these are to be reckoned trinkets of silver and of brass, as well as of stone and bone. As a proof of the advanced knowledge of the people referred to, I may here quote, from memory, a note from Stevens' Central America, to the effect that the bronze tools found in Yucatan, &c., amongst the quarries whence the stone for the ancient temples was procured, are nearly as hard as steel, and that a similar bronze is only known to have existed in some of the ancient tombs and quarries of Egypt, an observation which receives additional value from Domenech's remark, vol. I., p. 364— “These works of art (arms, idols, and medals, found in New Granada tombs) are acknowledged, by the archæologists of Panama, to possess the characteristics of both Chinese and Egyptian art." Here, again, I would call my readers' attention to the facts, that in very modern times Chinese have migrated to California, Australia, Singapore, and other distant localities, and that Fortune found Egyptian curiosities in virtù shops in China, whilst Egyptologists have discovered Chinese manufactures in Egyptian tombs. The subject of the extent of travel in ancient times does not enter into my present plan; but as I am desirous to make the mind of my readers expansive enough to receive everything which bears upon the history of man upon the earth, I may be allowed to sow seed by the way-side, some of which may blossom as "a garden flower grown wild." Domenech, in p. 408, vol. I., figures a remarkable stone, by many persons supposed to be a hoax or forgery, which was found at the base of one of the largest mounds in North America, situated in Western Virginia. It lay in a sepulchral chamber, thirty-five feet from the surface, was elliptic in shape, two inches and a-half long, two wide, and about half an inch thick, and the material was of a dark colour, and very hard. The following is a