helf about three feet above the floor. On the margin of the tank, in
the court of the ruined mosque at Baalbec, there are shown four giant
footmarks, which are supposed to have been impressed by some patriarch
or prophet, but are more likely to have been connected with the
ancient religion of Canaan, which lingered here to the latest days of
Roman paganism. In the great Druse shrine of Neby Schaib near Hattin
there is a square block of limestone in the centre of which is a piece
of alabaster containing the imprint of a human foot of natural size,
with the toes very clearly defined. The Druses reverently kiss this
impression, asserting that the rock exudes moisture, and that it is
never dry. There is a split in the rock across the centre of the
footprint, which they account for by saying that when the prophet
stepped here he split the rock with his tread. In Damascus there was
at one time a sacred building called the Mosque of the Holy Foot, in
which there was a stone having upon it the print of the feet of Moses.
Ibn Batuta saw this curious relic early in the fourteenth century; but
both the mosque and the stone have since disappeared. On the eastern
side of the Jordan a Bedouin tribe, called the Adwan, worship the
print left on a stone by the roadside by a prophetess while mounting
her camel, in order to proceed on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Kadriyeh
dervishes of Egypt adore a gigantic shoe, as an emblem of the sacred
foot of the founder of their sect; and near Madura, a large leather
shoe is offered in worship to a deity that, like Diana, presides over
the chase.

To the student of comparative religion the Phrabat, or Sacred Foot of
Buddha, opens up a most interesting field of investigation. In the
East, impressions of the feet of this wonderful person are as common
as those of Christ and the Virgin Mary in the West. Buddhists are
continually increasing the number by copies of the originals; and
native painters of Siam who are ambitious of distinction often present
these sacred objects to the king, adorned with the highest skill of
their art, as the most acceptable gift they can offer. The sacred
footprint enters into the very essence of the Buddhist religion; it
claims from the Indo-Chinese nations a degree of veneration scarcely
yielding to that which they pay to Buddha himself. It is very ancient,
and was framed to embody in one grand symbol a complete system of
theology and theogony, which has been gradually forgo