her stags being maddened to fresh excitement by the
sight and smell of the bears, and other wild animals. But, eager as were
the brutes that dragged the precarious carriage, they were somewhat tamed
by the great steepness of the ascent, up which they bounded, to the
heights at the back of the town. Up this path, often narrow and
excessively dangerous, we all took our way, and finally, after passing
through various perilous defiles and skirting many cliffs, we arrived at
a level space in front of an ancient temple of one of their heathen gods.
It was built like the others in the settlement below, but the white stone
had become brown and yellow with time and weather, and the colours,
chiefly red and blue, with which the graven images, in contempt of the
second commandment, were painted, had faded, and grown very dim.

On the broad platform in front of this home of evil spirits had been
piled a great mound of turf, sloping very gradually and smoothly, like
the terrace of a well-kept lawn, to the summit, which itself was,
perhaps, a hundred feet in circumference. On this was erected a kind of
breastwork of trunks of trees, each tree some fifteen feet in length, and
in the centre of the circular breastwork was an altar, as usual, under
which blazed a fire of great fierceness. From the temple came a very
aged woman, dressed in bear skins, who carried a torch. This torch she
lit at the blaze under the altar, and a number of the young men, lighting
their torches at hers, set fire to the outer breastwork, in which certain
open spaces or entrances had been purposely left. No sooner had the
trees begun to catch fire, which they did slowly, being of green wood,
than the multitude outside, with the most horrible and piercing outcries,
began to drive the animals which they had brought with them into the
midst of the flames.

The spectacle was one of the most terrible I ever beheld, even among this
cruel and outlandish people, whose abominable inventions contrasted so
strangely with the mildness of their demeanour where their religion was
not concerned. It was pitiful to see the young birds, many of them not
yet able to fly, flutter into the flames and the stifling smoke, and then
fall, scorched, and twittering miserably. The young lambs and other
domesticated animals were forced in without much resistance, but the
great difficulty was to urge the wolves, antelopes, and other wild
creatures, into the blaze. The cries of the