brother,' they shall not lament for him, saying,1ah! Lord!' or 'ah his glory!' he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem."

Boudinot writes, "They often sleep over these tombs, which, by the loud wailing of the women at dusk of eve, and dawn of day, on benches close to the tombs, must awaken the memory of their relatives very often."-Star in the West.

It was customary for the Hebrews to bury with the illustrious dead, many valuables. Josephus notices this ancient custom, when by the treachery of an apostate of the Asmonean family, the Syrian invader robbed the sepulchre of David of three thousand talents of gold, which had for one thousand three hundred years been entombed with his body.

"On the death of the husband the squaws shew the sincerity of their grief by giving away to their neighbours every thing they possess. They go out from the village and build for themselves a small shelter of grass or bark, and mortify themselves by cutting off their hair, scarifying their skin, and in their insulated hut they lament incessantly. If the deceased has left a brother, he takes the widow to his lodge, after a proper interval, and considers her as his wife without any preparatory formality."-Hope of Israel, p. 208.

exposed in the fields to beasts of prey, but we will take care that it, like yourself, shall be gathered to your forefathers." He adds, "the face of the corpse is turned to the east."-Discovery of the Source Mississippi.

1 The Chocktaws employ mourners for the dead, as the Hebrews, and both they and the Chickasaws term a person who does so, Yah-ah, (Ah Lord.)

2 It was invariably the custom of the Indians to bury with the dead his effects, no enemy ever molests those bodies which had once been the dwellingplaces of the immortal part of their being. The grave, with them, proves a place inviolably sacred.

"On the Talapoose river were found two brazen tablets, and five of copper. They esteemed them so sacred as to keep them secreted in their holy of holies, without touching them except at their festivals, some had writing on them, and had been buried with their beloved prophets." This is attested by William Bolsover, Esq. 1759.

"I have noticed, (writes Mr. Makenny, in his late Tour,) several women here carrying with them rolls of clothing. On inquiring what it imported, I learn that they are widows who carry them, and that they are the badges of mourning. It is indispensable, when a woman of the Chippaway tribe loses her husband, for her to take off her best apparel, and roll it up, confining it by means of her husband's sashes: and if he had ornaments, these are put on the top of the roll, &c. This she calls her husband, and it is expected that she is never to be seen without it. If she walks, she takes it with her; if she sits down in her lodge, she places it by her side. This badge of widowhood she is to carry, until some of her husband's family shall call and claim it, &c. She is then, but not before, released from her mourning, and at liberty to marry again. Sometimes a brother of the deceased takes her for his wife at the grave of her husband, which is done by the ceremony of walking over it. And this he has a right to do. I was told by the interpreter, that he had known a woman left to mourn after this manner for years, none of her husband's family having called for the token of her grief. At length it was told her that one of her husband's family was to pass, and she was advised to speak to him on the subject. She told him she had mourned long, and was poor, having no means to buy clothes-those she had being all in the mourning badge, and thus too sacred to be touched. She expressed a hope that her request might not be interpreted into a wish to marry; it was only made that she might be placed in a situation to get some clothes. He answered, that he was then going to Mackinack, and would think of it. In this state of uncertainty she was left, but on his return, finding her still faithful, he took her "husband," and presented her with clothing of various kinds. Thus was she rewarded for her constancy."

This custom is so evidently, (however modified,) of Hebrew origin, that it is not a little surprising Makenny should say he "found nothing Jewish among them, except their houses of purification.”

CIRCUMCISION.

THE testimony of Herrera, Garcia, Diaz, Torquemeda, Gomara, and Martyr, are unanimous in establishing the practice of circumcision among the tribes of the New Continent. "Herrera," (observes the commentator on the Antiq. Mex.) "almost in the very words of Acosta, notices in the seventeenth chapter of the second book of the third Decade, that this custom was prevalent among the Mexicans; and Bernal Diaz is quite explicit on the subject in the following passage of the twentieth chapter of his Hist. of the Conq. of Mex. "In some provinces they were circumcised, and they had flint knives with which they performed the ceremony."-Ibid. p. 334.

With respect to circumcision, Martyr and Gomara, whose veracity as historians was never doubted, both affirm

1 "The Indians to the eastward say, that previous to the white people coming into the country, their ancestors were in the habit of using circumcision, but latterly, not being able to assign any reason for so strange a practice, their young people insisted on its being abolished."-Star in the West.

M'Kenzie says the same of the Indians whom he saw on his route. History; p. 34. Speaking of the nations of the Slave and Dog-rib Indians, very far to the north-west, he says, "Whether circumcision be practised among them, I cannot pretend to say, but the appearance of it was general among those I saw."

"The Dog-rib Indians live about two or three hundred miles from the straits of Kamschatka."

Dr. Beatty says, in his journal of a visit paid to the Indians on the Ohio, about fifty years ago, that an aged Indian informed him, that an old uncle of his, who died about the year 1728, related to him several customs and traditions of former times; and among others, "that circumcision was practised among the Indians long ago, but their young men making a mock at it, brought it into disrepute, and so it came to be disused."-Journal, p. 89.

that the Indians were circumcised. The former, addressing Leo X. in the tenth chapter of the third Ocean Decade, says, speaking of the Indian fugitive who came to the Spanish settlements of Darien. "He sayde further, that in his country there were cities fortified with walls, and governed by laws; that the people used apparel, but of what religion they were I did not learne, yet hadde our Manne knowledge both by words and signs of the fugitive, that they were circumcised. What think ye now hereby most holy Father, or what doe you divine may come hereof when time shall have subdued all these under your throne?" And in the first chapter of his fourth Decade, inscribed to the same Pontif, he gives the following description of the people of Yutican. "This nation is not appareled with woole, because they have no sheep, but with cotton, after a thousand fashions and diversely colored. Their women are clad from their waiste to their ancles, and cover their heads and brests with vayles." "This people frequent their temples often. They are great idolaters, and are circumcised, but not all."

"In the third chapter of the same Decade, he says, that the inhabitants of the Island of Cozumilla, situated on the coast of Yutican, were circumcised. Garcia, likewise, in the following passage of the first section of the eighth chapter of the third book of his Origin of the Indians, confutes the error of Acosta respecting the use of circumcision amongst the Indians."

"It is certainly very extraordinary to find from the "Oronoco Illustrada" of Gumilla, and Carreat's Voyages to the West Indies, that in nations remote from each other, as those of the Oronoca, and the tribes who lived on the confines of Peru, on the banks of La Plata, as well as the Chalachaques, a people situated between Peru and Te

cumion, all used circumcision, and abstained from the flesh of swine. Captain Cook also discovered that circumcision had extended to the Islands of the South Sea. How, to use the words of Gumilla, are these moral phenomena to be explained? The Mexicans, besides this rite, marked the breasts and arms of the children on the feast of Toxcatl, with another sign which Torquemeda compares in the following passage of the sixteenth chapter of the tenth book of his Indian Monarchy, with the analogous ceremony of marking the sign of the cross upon the breast, &c. of the faithful among Christians with the holy oil and chrism." 1

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Gomara and Gumelli say, that the Silivas circumcise their children the eighth day after their birth. Sahagun says, in the twenty-fourth chapter of the second book of his History, describing the attire of the Deity Huitzilopoctli. "If they believed that that god had commanded circumcision, it is probable that their symbol, the flint knife,' upon that part of his dress was a memorial of that ordinance." -Ibid. p. 271.

"The earliest Spanish writers, &c. such as Martyr, (who scarely would have ventured to state a deliberate falsehood to the Pope; (and one which he sooner than any other person would have been capable of detecting,) and Gomara, who was chaplain to Cortez, and dedicated his History to Don Martin Cortez, his son, and therefore had the best

1 "It is no light thing to note, that on this day the priests make a scar on the breasts and stomachs of the male and female children, and on the wrists and fleshy parts of the arms of others, impressing them as it were with the iron and mark of the devil, to whose service they offered them, in order that they might be known as his: in the same way that God commands that those of his fold should be anointed on their breasts with the holy oil, and on their foreheads with the most blessed cross of his passion and death, since this is the sign with which God is accustomed to mark those who are his, (as circumcision was formerly amongst his ancient people,) which is now the cross and holy chrism: hence John bade the persecutors and murders desist from the work of slaughter, until the servants of God were marked on their foreheads, since this is the kind of sign by which he distinguishes those who are his, as the owners of cattle mark their herds with a particular print or sign."-p. 394.