ke them
invulnerable, was at that time apprehended and punished, and a law was
enacted for the suppression of the practice, under which several
examples were made, but without effecting for many years, any diminution
of the evil sought to be remedied.

[139] In Kosters's travels in Brazil, we read of a negro who was
reported by one of his fellows to become occasionally _lobas homen_ or
wolf-man. "I asked him," said the author, "to explain; when he said,
that the man was at times transformed into an animal, of the size of a
calf with the figure of a dog;" and in the African memoranda is an
account of a negro who professed and even believed to have the power of
transforming himself into an alligator, in which state he devoured men.
Upon being questioned by Captain Beaver, he answered, "I can change
myself into an alligator, and have often done it." But though these may
be genuine African superstitions, and not such as have been introduced
by the Portuguese, yet it is certain there is no part of Europe to which
they do not equally belong.

[140] Beckman, vol 1, p. 74 to 103.

[141] See Major Long's expedition, vol. 1. p. 226.

CHAPTER XIX.

ON THE ORIGIN AND SUPERSTITIOUS INFLUENCE OP RINGS.

The ancient magicians, among other pretended extraordinary powers of
accomplishing wonderful things by their superior knowledge of the secret
powers of nature, of the virtues of plants and minerals, and of the
motions and influence of the stars, attached no small degree of mystic
importance to rings, the origin of which, their matter and uses,
together with the supposed virtues of the stones set in them, afford a
subject squaring so much with our design, and so deserving of notice
from the curious, that no apology need be made for discoursing on them.

According to the accounts of the heathen mythologists, Prometheus, who,
in the first times, had discovered a great number of secrets, having
been delivered from the charms, by which he was fastened to mount
Caucasus for stealing fire from heaven, in memory or acknowledgment of
the favour he received from Jupiter, made himself of one of those
chains, a ring, in whose collet he represented the figure of part of the
rock where he had been detained--or rather, as Pliny says, set it in a
bit of the same rock, and put it on his finger. This was the first ring
and the first stone. But we otherwise learn, that the use of rings is
very ancient, and the Egyptians were the first in