he world were come to an end, and
hailstones that looked like steel-caps," etc. Various other European
legends of like character will be found in _Liebrecht's Gervasius von
Tilbury_, pp. 147-148.

Rain-makers there are in many parts of the world; but it is remarkable
that those also of Samoa in the Pacific operate by means of a
_rain-stone_.

Such weather conjurings as we have spoken of are ascribed by Ovid to
Circe:

"Concipit illa preces, et verba venefica dicit;
Ignotosque Deos ignoto carmine adorat,
* * * *
_Tunc quoque cantato densetur carmine caelum,
Et nebulas exhalat humus_."--_Metam._ XIV. 365.

And to Medea:--

--"Quum volui, ripis mirantibus, amnes
In fontes rediere suos ... (another feat of the Lamas)
... _Nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco; ventos abigoque, vocoque_."--Ibid. VII. 199.

And by Tibullus to the _Saga_ (_Eleg._ I. 2, 45); whilst Empedocles, in
verses ascribed to him by Diogenes Laertius, claims power to communicate
like secrets of potency:--

"By my spells thou may'st
To timely sunshine turn the purple rains,
And parching droughts to fertilising floods."

(See _Cathay_, p. clxxxvii.; _Erdm._ 282; _Oppert_, 182 seqq.; _Erman_,
I. 153; _Pallas, Samml._ II. 348 seqq.; _Timk._ I. 402; _J. R. A. S._
VII. 305-306; _D'Ohsson_, II. 614; and for many interesting particulars,
_Q. R._ p. 428 seqq., and _Hammers Golden Horde_, 207 and 435 seqq.)

NOTE 9.--It is not clear whether Marco attributes this cannibalism to the
Tibetans and Kashmirians, or brings it in as a particular of Tartar custom
which he had forgotten to mention before.

The accusations of cannibalism indeed against the Tibetans in old accounts
are frequent, and I have elsewhere (see _Cathay_, p. 151) remarked on some
singular Tibetan practices which go far to account for such charges. Della
Penna, too, makes a statement which bears curiously on the present
passage. Remarking on the great use made by certain classes of the Lamas
of human skulls for magical cups, and of human thigh bones for flutes and
whistles, he says that to supply them with these _the bodies of executed
criminals were stored up of the disposal of the Lamas_; and a Hindu
account of Tibet in the _Asiatic Researches_ asserts that when one is
killed in a fight both parties rush forward and struggle for the liver,
which they eat (vol. xv).

[Carpini says of the people of Tibet: "They are pagans; they have a most
astoni