it, in the beginning of the memoirs of his own
life, to which the reader is referred. Nothing is less becoming a
philosopher, than wittily pointing out national peculiarities, without
taking the least pains to discover the foundations on which they are
built, or connecting them with circumstances and principles common to
mankind. Every thing, in fact, will seem anomalous and insulated in the
history of different nations, if it is not distinctly recollected that
human nature is the same throughout the globe which it inhabits, and is
merely modified by external causes.--E.]

Every Raja sets up in the principal town of his province, or nigree, a
large stone, which serves as a memorial of his reign. In the principal
town of Seba, where we lay, there are thirteen such stones, besides many
fragments of others, which had been set up in earlier times, and are now
mouldering away: These monuments seem to prove that some kind of civil
establishment here is of considerable antiquity. The last thirteen
reigns in England make something more than 276 years.

Many of these stones are so large, that it is difficult to conceive by
what means they were brought to their present station, especially as it
is the summit of a hill; but the world is full of memorials of human
strength, in which the mechanical powers that have been since added by
mathematical science, seem to be surpassed; and of such monuments there
are not a few among the remains of barbarous antiquity in our own
country, besides those upon Salisbury plain.

These stones not only record the reigns of successive princes, but serve
for a purpose much more extraordinary, and probably altogether peculiar
to this country. When a raja dies, a general feast is proclaimed
throughout his dominions, and all his subjects assemble round these
stones: Almost every living creature that can be caught is then killed,
and the feast lasts for a less or greater number of weeks or months, as
the kingdom happens to be more or lets furnished with live stock at the
time; the stones serve for tables. When this madness is over, a fast
must necessarily ensue, and the whole kingdom is obliged to subsist upon
syrup and water, if it happens in the dry season, when no vegetables can
be procured, till a new stock of animals can be raised from the few that
have escaped by chance, or been preserved by policy from the general
massacre, or can be procured from the neighbouring kingdoms. Such,
however, is the