gratulated themselves on their destiny. But they did not always sacrifice such mean persons. In great calamities, in a pressing famine, for example, if the people thought they had some pretext to impute the cause of it to the king, they sacrificed him without hesitation, as the highest price they could pay for the divine favour. In this manner the first king of Vermland was burnt in honour of Odin, to put away a great dearth. The kings in their turn did not spare the blood of their people; and many of them even that of their children. Hacon, king of Norway, offered his son in sacrifice to obtain a victory over his enemy, Harold. Aune, king of Sweden, devoted to Odin the blood of his nine sons, to prevail on the god to prolong his life. The ancient history of the north abounds in similar examples.

These abominable sacrifices were accompanied with various ceremonies. When the victim was chosen, they conducted him towards the altar, where the sacred fire was kept burning night and day. It was surrounded by all sorts of iron and brazen vessels. Among them one was distinguished by its superior size; in this they received the blood of their victim. When they offered up animals, they speedily killed them at the foot of the altar; then they opened their entrails and drew auguries from them, as among the Romans: but when they sacrificed men, those they pitched upon were laid upon a large stone, and quickly strangled or knocked on the head. Sometimes they let out the blood, for no presage was more respected than that which they drew from the greater or less degree of impetuosity with which the blood gushed out. The bodies were afterwards burnt, or suspended in a sacred grove near the temple. Part of the blood was sprinkled upon the people, on the grove, on the idol, altar, benches and wall of the temple, within and without.

Sometimes the sacrifices were varied.

There was

a deep well in the neighbourhood of the temple; the chosen person was thrown headlong in, commonly in honour of Goya, or the earth. If it went at once to the bottom, it had proved agreeable to the goddess; if not, she refused it, and it was hung up in a sacred forest. Near the temple of Upsal there was a grove of this sort, every tree and every leaf of which was regarded as the most sacred thing in the world. This, which was named Odin's grove, was full of the bodies of men and animals which had been sacrificed. The temple at Upsal was as famous for its oracles as its sacrifices. There were also celebrated ones at Dalia, a province of Sweden, in Norway, and Denmark. It should seem that the idols of the gods themselves delivered the oracles viva voce. In an ancient Icelandic chronicle, we read of one Indred, who went from home to wait for Thorstein, his enemy. Thorstein, upon his arrival, went into the temple. In it was a stone, probably a statue, which he had been accustomed to worship. He prostrated himself before it, and prayed it to inform him of his destiny. Indred, who stood without, heard the stone chant forth these verses- "It is for the last time: it is with feet drawing near to the grave, that thou art come to this place, for it is most certain that before the sun riseth the valiant Indred shall make thee feel his hatred."

The people persuaded themselves sometimes that these idols answered by a gesture, or nod of the head. Thus in the history of Olave Tryggeson, king of Norway, we see a lord, named Hacon, who enters into a temple, and prostrates himself before an idol which held in its hand a great bracelet of gold. Hacon, adds the historian, easily conceiving that so long as the idol would not part with the bracelet, it was not disposed to be reconciled to him, and having made

some fruitless efforts to take the bracelet away, began to pray afresh, and to offer it presents; then getting up a second time, the idol loosed the bracelet, and he went away very well pleased.

But they had not only their bloody sacrifices, and their oracles, but their orgies of licentiousness. These occurred on the occasion of the feast of Frigga, the goddess of love and pleasure; and at Uulel, the feast of Thor, in which the license was carried to such a pitch as to become merely bacchanalian meetings, where, amidst shouts, dancing, and indecent gestures, so many unseemly actions were committed as to disgust the wiser part of the community.

CHAPTER V.

NORTHERN INDIANS, MEXICANS, AND PERUVIANS.

We have just seen that the same baleful superstitions extended themselves from the east to the very extremities of Europe; but we must now share in the astonishment of the discoverers of America, to find them equally reigning and rendering miserable the people there. A new world was found, which had been hidden from the day of creation to the fifteenth Christian age; yet there, through that long lapse of time, it was discovered, the same dominant spirit, and the same terrible system of paganism had been existing. The learned of Europe, on this great event, were extremely puzzled for a time, to conceive how and whence this distant continent had been peopled. The proven proximity of Asia at Behrings Straits, solved the mystery. But had not this become apparent, so identical are the superstitions, the traditions and practices of the Americans, with those of ancient Asia, that we might have confidently pronounced them to have come from that great seminary of the human race.

The North-American Indians, who preserved both most of their liberty, their simplicity of life and of sentiment, worshipping only the Great Spirit, and refusing to have any image of deity; having in

general no priests, yet retained many, and very clear, traditions of the primeval world. So striking were these facts, combined with the Asiatic aspects of the Indians in their better days, before European oppressions and European vices had wasted and degraded them, that the early missionaries and visitants of America, Adair, Branaird, Charlevoix, nay, William Penn himself, were strongly persuaded that they had found the lost ten tribes of Israel. When they saw them carrying before them to battle an ark; saw them celebrating feasts of new moons, and heard them talk of the times when the angels of God walked upon earth with their ancestors; talk of the two first people; of the two first brothers, one of whom slew the other; of the flood, and similar traditionary facts; it is not wonderful that they should have adopted such a notion,—not perceiving, as we do now, that these are familiar features of the Asiatic nations; and that though they did not prove them to be Hebrews, they did to a certainty prove them to be Asiatics.

I must here passingly notice one inference, which seems unaccountably to have escaped the minds of antiquarians, connected with the peopling of this continent. In the North-American wilds, exist strange mounds and foundations of old fortifications, cairns, or burying-places, in which earthern vessels and other artificial remains are found, which prove that some people occupied these forests long before the present race of Indians; a people who had more of the arts of civilized life amongst them than these ever possessed. In certain caves of Kentucky, mummies have even been found. Now connecting these facts with the universal traditions of the Mexicans and South Americans, that they came originally from a country far to the north-west, does it not seem clear enough that these remains were the traces of the earlier