skins, had a great Tartar bonnet, with two horns growing thro' it,
and was eight feet high, without feet, legs or proportion. Before this
idol their lay sixteen or seventeen people, who brought their offerings,
and were making their prayers, while at a distance stood three men and
one bullock, as victims to this ugly monster.

Such stupendous sacrilege as this, in robbing the true God of his
honour, filled me with the greatest astonishment and reflection: which
soon turning to rage and fury, I rode up to the image, and cut in pieces
the bonnet that was upon his head with my sword, so that it hung down by
one of the horns, while one of my men that was with me pulled at it by
his sheep-skin garment. Immediately an hideous howling and outcry ran
through the village, and two or three hundred people coming about our
ears, we were obliged to fly for it.

But I had not done with the monster; for the caravan being to rest
three nights in the town, I told the Scots merchant what I had seen, and
that I was resolved to take four or five men well armed with me, in
order to destroy the idol, and show the people how little reason they
had to trust in a god who could not save himself. At first he laughed at
me, representing the danger of it, and when it was destroyed, what time
had we to preach to them better things, whole zeal and ignorance was in
the highest degree, and both unparalleled? that if I should be taken by
them, I should be served as a poor ruffian, who contemned their worship;
that is, to be stripped naked, and tied to the top of the idol, there
shot at with arrows till my body was fall of them, and then burnt as a
sacrifice to the monster; _but Sir_, said he, _since your zeal carries
you so far, rather than you should be alone I will accompany you, and
bring a stout fellow equal to yourself, if you will, to assist you in
this design:_ and accordingly he brought one Captain Richardson, who,
hearing the story, readily consented; but my partner declined it, being
altogether out of his way: and so we three, and my servant, resolved to
execute this exploit about midnight; but upon second thoughts we
deferred it to the next night, by reason that the caravan being to go
from hence the next morning, we should be out of the governor's power.
The better to effectuate my design, I procured a Tartar's sheep-skin
robe, a bonnet, with bow and arrows, and every one of us got the like
habits, the first night we spent in mixing combusti