a recent expedition the English have found certain
idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
from the close stool of the high priest. Mr. Hastings, and
Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
admitted by the Lamas. When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
absorbed and pass into the substance of each other. It is
upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
serpent is Budd and the world.

After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:

I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which
divide these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms
of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a
principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry
they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the
fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung
round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of
snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious
convulsions, the dead to deceive the living. There, the black tribes of
Africa exhibit the same opinions in the worship of their fetiches. See
the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a great snake, which, unluckily,
the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean attires his god in a coat of
several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The Kamchadale, observing that
everything goes wrong in his frozen country, considers god as an old
ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting foxes and martins in his
sledge.***

* It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
great desolation in the country. President de Brosses has
given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
collection of absurdities of this nature.

** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
these constitute the un