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Rh to lay at his side a copper hatchet, or an arrow, that he may make his entry triumphantly. Others are persuaded of a transmigration, not only into other human bodies, but likewise into those of brutes. The caciques, warriors, and faithful wives, constantly pass into the animals that are deemed the most estimable, such as the monkey, the tiger, &c.; and as the certain inference is drawn by these Indians, that the soul of their father, or of the cacique, entered into this monkey with a tail, or into that one with a beard, they make a thousand genuflections to the animal, and worship him as if he were a patriarch. Quintus Ennius could not have passed more effectually, when he was in the body of the peacock; nor the brachmanes, the progenitors of the modern brahmins, whose highest satisfaction it was, when they found their dissolution approaching, to be so near to a cow or a horse, as to be enabled to drag it by the tail, and thus find a ready entrance for their spirit by the posterior opening. Notwithstanding, in imitation of the Greeks and Romans, the Indians in question fancy that certain spirits flutter in the air, or are pent up in the bottom of the rivers, either on account of particular crimes, or until they can meet with a body which may be adapted to them; still, generally speaking, they have not any idea of sins, or of an abode of torments in a future state. To a Jesuit who reproached an old man with the former, and endeavoured to persuade him of the existence of the latter, he replied in a very serious tone: "take notice, there is nothing in all this; my sins are very good; I find them about me, and shall not go, neither do I wish to go, to burn myself."

Proceeding from the soul to the body, it is to be observed, that