Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/186

 1 74 On the defcent isf the American Indians from the Jews.

found dry ground to reft on *. They alfo place a bafon of cold water with , fome pebbles in it on the ground, near the patient, then they invoke the fifh, becaufe of its cold element, to cool the heat of the fever. Again, they invoke the eagle, (Ooole) they folicit him as he foars in the heavens, to bring down refrefhing .things for their fick, and not to delay them, as he can dart down upon the wing, quick as a flam of lightning. They are fo tedious on this fubject, that it would be a tafk to repeat it : however, it may be needful to obferve, that they chufe the eagle becaufe of its fup- pofed communicative virtues ; and that it is according to its Indian name, a cherubimical emblem, and the king of birds, of prodigious ftrength, fwiftnefs of wing, majeftic ftature, and loving its young ones fo tenderly, as ta carry them on its back, and teach them to fly.

Jofephus tells us, that Solomon had a divine power conferred upon him, of driving evil fpirits out of poflefled perfons that he invented feveral incantations by which difeafes were cured -and left behind him fuch a lure method of exorcifing, as the dsemons never returned again : and he aflures us, the Jews followed the like cuftom as late as his own time , and that he faw fuch a cure performed by one Eleazar. They likewife ima gined, that the liver of a fim would keep away evil fpirits, as one of the apocryphal writers acquaints us -f.

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They looked on that place as unhappy, where either of them had croaked in the morning. Hefiod forbids to leave a houfe unfinifhed, left a crow fhould chance to come and croak when fitting on it. And moft of the illiterate peafants in Europe are tinclured with the like fuper- ftition, pretending to draw ill omens from its voice.
 * The ancients drew bad prefages from th fituation, and croaking of ravens and crows.

t They imagined incenfe alfo to be a fure means to banifli the devil j though afafoetida, or the devil's dung, might have been much better. On Cant. iv. 6. " I will get me to the hill of incenfe," the Chaldee paraphraft fays, that, while the houfe of Ifrael kept the art of their holy fore-fathers, both the morning and mid-day evil fpirits fled away, becaufe the <3ivine glory dwelt in the fanftuary, which was built on Mount Moriah ; and that all the devils fled when they fmelled the effluvia of the fine incenfe that was there. They likewife believed that herbs and roots had a power to expel dxmons. And Jofephus tells us, that the root Sara, immediately drives out the devil. I fuppofe it had fuch a phyfical power againft fevers and agues, as the jefuit's bark.

The church of Rome, in order to have powerful holy things, as well as tie Jews, applies {alt, fpittle, holy-water, and confecrated oil, to expel the devils from the credulous of their

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