Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/115

 NOTES REFERRED TO.

$1$ Bethulia, .—This word is not found either in the classic Grecian or Latin authors, and yet its use may be traced in the quotation of Damascius in Photius's Library, and in Hesychius, who deduces it from, pellis, because he thinks it took the name from the stone which Saturn devoured instead of Jupiter being enveloped in a skin. A more simple and probable derivation is from the Hebrew a house, and  the Lord, the literal interpretation of Jacob's stone pillow. In this Bochart, Scaliger, Selden, and Bompart concur; and it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that nations who boast the possession of such stones, claim them as the identical block which Jacob sanctified by pouring oil upon it, and giving its locality this designation. The Mahommedans, as one cause of their reverence of the Caaba, trace it back to this origin; and so do the Irish and Scotch, for the stone now under the coronation-chair in Westminster Abbey, it being brought by some of the regal family of Jerusalem, after the first destruction of that city, and lodged within Tara's princely halls, whence it migrated with the Scoti, who took possession of Scotland, to Scone, till it was taken as a trophy by Edward the First to his own capital.

Some of these meteoric stones are met with of immense and almost incredible size. In the British Museum is a portion of one which fell at Otumbo, in Central America, estimated to have weighed fifteen tons, as described by Don Rubico de Cilis. This fragment weighs fourteen hundred pounds: but according to Southey, one fell at Durango which far surpassed even this enormous mass, as described by Gaspar de Villagra, in Historia de la Nueva Mejico. The common resource of ignorance and fear, to deem everything uncommon, supernatural, is found equally active in undiscovered America as in the East. The Aztec tradition fabled that a demon appeared to two brothers who were leading a horde of ancient Mexicans in search of a new country: she told them to separate, and threw down the block of iron which she carried on her head, to be a boundary betwixt them.

It is true, Humboldt's observations reduce this weight very considerably; but even his authentic data of nineteen hundred myriogrammes leave sufficient room for the wonder and worship of an ignorant people. The soldiers of Cortez found on the Pyramid of Cholula a meteorite divinely worshipped as an immediate gift of the Sun, much the same as Sanconiathon tells us in the passage of the text, the. $2$ Caaba.—In Sale's Translation of the twenty-second chapter of the Koran (4to, London, 1734, p. 276) we find this expression:—"Call to