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274 whither, they say, he retired, after having terminated the creation of the former. They name him our Father, our Grandsire; but neither erect to him an altar, nor build him a temple, nor pay him the slightest homage. They simply address themselves to him at the time of an earthquake. They think that this phenomenon arises from his quitting the sky, to pass in review living mortals, and to infer, from the noise they make, the number of those who exist. Impressed with this belief, and persuaded that at each of his steps the globe trembles, they scarcely perceive the smallest movement, than they all quit their huts simultaneously, running, leaping, and stamping the ground, with the exclamation of, here we are, here we are! A superstition of this nature unquestionably originated from those primitive sentiments, deeply engraven in the human breast, touching the adorable and beneficent providence of God, which watches over mortals?—from those ineffable sentiments which can never be obliterated, either by barbarism, by idolatry, or by those pernicious and perverse deists who dare to lift the finger against Him to whom they owe their being, and who watches over their existence. How great a benefit would it be to the human race, if these pretended fathers of philosophy could be colle6led, and immured in the forests of the country of the Amazons, to the end that, in stamping the ground with the barbarians, they might at least be led in this way to acknowledge the Divine Providence, and cease to disturb the order which is so essentially connected with the felicity and repose of man!

In developing the obscure traditions of the above-mentioned Indians, a glimpse of the great events of the earliest epochs of Nature, and even of those of posterior times, may be cerned;