l times repeating
the same sentence, till he has finished the round, for their houses are
at least a hundred yards long. Valour towards their enemies and love
towards their wives, are the two heads of his discourse, never failing in
the close, to put them in mind, that 'tis their wives who provide them
their drink warm and well seasoned. The fashion of their beds, ropes,
swords, and of the wooden bracelets they tie about their wrists, when
they go to fight, and of the great canes, bored hollow at one end, by the
sound of which they keep the cadence of their dances, are to be seen in
several places, and amongst others, at my house. They shave all over,
and much more neatly than we, without other razor than one of wood or
stone. They believe in the immortality of the soul, and that those who
have merited well of the gods are lodged in that part of heaven where the
sun rises, and the accursed in the west.

They have I know not what kind of priests and prophets, who very rarely
present themselves to the people, having their abode in the mountains.
At their arrival, there is a great feast, and solemn assembly of many
villages: each house, as I have described, makes a village, and they are
about a French league distant from one another. This prophet declaims to
them in public, exhorting them to virtue and their duty: but all their
ethics are comprised in these two articles, resolution in war, and
affection to their wives. He also prophesies to them events to come, and
the issues they are to expect from their enterprises, and prompts them to
or diverts them from war: but let him look to't; for if he fail in his
divination, and anything happen otherwise than he has foretold, he is cut
into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false
prophet: for that reason, if any of them has been mistaken, he is no more
heard of.

Divination is a gift of God, and therefore to abuse it, ought to be a
punishable imposture. Amongst the Scythians, where their diviners failed
in the promised effect, they were laid, bound hand and foot, upon carts
loaded with firs and bavins, and drawn by oxen, on which they were burned
to death.--[Herodotus, iv. 69.]--Such as only meddle with things
subject to the conduct of human capacity, are excusable in doing the best
they can: but those other fellows that come to delude us with assurances
of an extraordinary faculty, beyond our understanding, ought they not to
be punished, when they