Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/117

Rh we have to depend are often extremely untrustworthy." He does not say, as M. Reville does with truth, that our evidence is chiefly embarrassing by its very wealth of testimony. Consider for a moment what our evidence as to the life and ideas of savages is. It begins with the Bible, which is rich in accounts of early religious ideas, animal worship, stone worship, ritual, taboos on articles of food; marriage customs and the like. Then we have Herodotus, with his descriptions of savage manners, myths, and customs. Next come all the innumerable Greek and Roman geographers, and many of the historians and general writers, Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny, Plutarch, Ptolemy, and dozens of others. For the New World, for Asia, for Africa, we have the accounts of voyagers, merchants, missionaries, from the Arab travellers in China to Marco Polo, to Sahagun, to Bernal Diaz, to Garcilasso de la Vega, to Hawkins, to all the Spanish travellers, and the Portuguese, to Hakluyt's men, we have the Jesuits with their Relations Edifiantes, we have evangelists of every Christian church and sect, we have travellers of every grade of learning and ignorance, from shipwrecked beech-combers to Nordenskiöld and Moseley. Now from Leviticus to the Cruise of the Challenger, from Herodotus to Mariner, nay, from the Rig-Veda to Fison and Howitt, we possess a series of independent documents on savage customs and belief, whether found among actual savages or left as survivals in civilisation. These documents all coincide on certain points, and establish, I venture to say, with evidence that would satisfy any jury, the ancient existence of certain extraordinary savage customs, myths, ideas, and rites of worship. These ideas and rites are still held and practised by savages, and seem natural to their state of mind. The savage who oils the stone he worships, in India or Polynesia, does what Jacob did, what the priests at Delphi did according to Pausanias, what the superstitious man did in Theophrastus. The Basuto, or Kamilaroi, or Ashanti, or Apache, or Oraon, who in Africa, Australia, America, or India, traces his descent from an animal or plant which he refuses to eat, did what the Elders of Israel did according to Ezekiel, what the Egyptians did according to Herodotus, what the loxidae of Athens did according to Plutarch. Thus the coincident testimony of a cloud of witnesses, through three thousand years, establishes the existence of certain savage beliefs and rites, in every quarter of the globe. Doubtless in each instance the evidence must be carefully scrutinised. Savages are reluctant to tell