Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/324

300 the blood, was from motives of religion, and for the purposes of idolatry, and so it probably had been among the Jews; for one of the reasons given in Leviticus for the prohibition of eating blood, or living flesh, is, that the people may no longer offer sacrifices to devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. If the reader chooses to be further informed how very common this practice was, he need only read the Halacoth Gedaloth, or its translation, where the whole chapter is taken up with instances of this kind.

this practice likewise prevailed in Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa, may be collected from various authors. The Greeks had their bloody feasts and sacrifices where they ate living flesh; these were called Omophagia. Arnobius says, "Let us pass over the horrid scenes presented at the Baccahanlian feast, wherein, with a counterfeited fury, though with a truly depraved heart, you twine a number of serpents around you, and, pretending to be possessed with some god, or spirit, you tear to pieces, with bloody mouths, the bowels of living goats, which cry all the time from the torture they suffer." From all this it appears, that the practice of the Abyssinians eating live animals at this day, was very far from being new, or, what was nonsensically said, impossible. And I shall only further observe, that those of my readers that wish to indulge a spirit of criticism upon the great variety of customs, men and manners, related in this history, or have those criticisms attended to, should furnish themselves with a more decent flock of reading than, in