ページの画像
PDF
ePub

was recovered, which was carried in procession to the church, the victorious peasants accompanying it.". Marcillac, Hist. de la Guerre de l'Espagne, p. 86.

[blocks in formation]

It is odd that in Hindostan, where it might have been supposed superstition would have facilitated the introduction of this practice, a pious fraud was found necessary for removing the prejudice against it.

Mooperal Streenivaschary, a Brahmin, thus writes to Dr. Anderson, at Madras, on vaccine inoculation.

"It might be useful to remove a prejudice in the minds of the people, arising from the term cow-pock, being taken literally in our Tamul tongue; whereas there can be no doubt that it has been a drop of nectar from the exuberant udders of the cows in England, and no way similar to the humour discharged from the tongue and feet of diseased cattle in this country."-FORBES's Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 423.

For tyrannous fear dissolved all natural bonds of man.

Canto I. st. 3.

Mackenzie gives a dreadful picture of the effect of small-pox among the North American Indians.

"The small-pox spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread around with a baneful rapidity, which no flight could escape, and with a fatal effect that nothing could resist. It destroyed with its pestilential breath whole families and tribes; and the horrid scene presented to those who had the melancholy and afflicting opportunity of beholding it, a combination of the dead, the dying, and such as, to avoid the horrid fate of their friends around them, prepared to disappoint the plague of its prey, by terminating their own existence.

"The habits and lives of these devoted people, which provided not to-day for the wants of to-morrow, must have VOL. VII.

I

heightened the pains of such an affliction, by leaving them not only without remedy, but even without alleviation. Nought was left them but to submit in agony and despair.

"To aggravate the picture, if aggravation were possible, may be added the putrid carcases which the wolves, with a furious voracity, dragged forth from the huts, or which were mangled within them by the dogs, whose hunger was satisfied with the disfigured remains of their masters. Nor was it uncommon for the father of a family, whom the infection had not reached, to call them around him, to represent the cruel sufferings and horrid fate of their relations, from the influence of some evil spirit, who was preparing to extirpate their race; and to incite them to baffle death, with all its horrors, by their own poniards. At the same time, if their hearts failed them in this necessary act, he was himself ready to perform the deed of mercy with his own hand, as the last act of his affection, and instantly to follow them to the common place of rest and refuge from human evil.”

And from the silent door the jaguar turns away.

Canto I. st. 11.

I may be forgiven for not having strictly adhered to natural history in this instance. The liberty which I have taken is mentioned, that it may not be supposed to have arisen from ignorance of this animal's habits.

The jaguar will not attack a living horse if a dead one be near, and when it kills its prey it drags it to its den, but is said not to eat the body till it becomes putrid. They are caught in large traps of the cage kind, baited with stinking meat, and then speared or shot through the bars. The Chalcaquines had a braver way of killing them: they provoked the animal, fronted it, received its attack upon a thick truncheon, which they held by the two ends, threw it down while its teeth were fixed in the wood, and ripped the creature up before it could recover. (Techo, p. 29.) A great profit is made by their skins. The jaguar which has once tasted human flesh becomes a most formidable animal; such a beast

is called a tigre cevado, a fleshed tiger. There was one which infested the road between Santa Fé and Santiago, and had killed ten men; after which a party of soldiers were sent to destroy it. The same thing is said of the lion and other beasts of prey, probably with truth; not as is vulgarly supposed, because they have a particular appetite for this kind of food, but because having once fed upon man, they from that time regard him like any animal of inferior strength, as their natural prey. "It is a constant observation in Numidia," says Bruce," that the lion avoids and flies from the face of men, till by some accident they have been brought to engage, and the beast has prevailed against him; then that feeling of superiority, imprinted by the Creator in the heart of all animals, for man's preservation, seems to forsake him. The lion having once tasted human blood, relinquishes the pursuit after the flock. He repairs to some high way or frequented path, and has been known, in the kingdom of Tunis, to interrupt the road to a market for several weeks; and in this he persists, till hunters or soldiers are sent out to destroy him." Dobrizhoffer saw the skin of a jaguar which was as long as the standard hide. He says, also, that he saw one attack two horses which were coupled with a thong, kill one, and drag the other away after it.

A most unpleasant habit of this beast is, that in cold or wet weather he chooses to lodge within doors, and will steal into the house. A girl at Corrientes, who slept with her mother, saw one lying under the bed when she rose in the morning: she had presence of mind to bid her mother lie still, went for help, and soon rid the house of its perilous visitor. Cat-like, the jaguar is a good climber; but Dobrizhoffer tells us how a traveller who takes to a tree for shelter may profit by the position: In promptu consilium; urina pro armis est: hac si tigridis ad arboris pedem minitantis oculos consperseris, salva res Quâ datâ portâ fuget illico. (i. 280.) He who first did this must have been a good marksman as well as a cool fellow, and it was well for him that he reserved his fire till the jaguar was within shot.

est.

Dobrizhoffer seems to credit an opinion (which is held in India of the tiger also), that the jaguar's claws are in a certain degree venomous; the scar which they leave is said to be always liable to a very painful and burning sense of heat. But that author, in his usual amusing manner, repeats many credulous notions concerning the animal: as that its burnt claws are a remedy for the tooth-ache; and that it has a mode of decoying fish, by standing neck-deep in the water, and spitting out a white foam, which allures them within reach. Techo (30.) says the same thing of a large snake.

An opinion that wounds inflicted by the stroke of animals of this kind are envenomed is found in the East also. Captain Williamson says, "However trivial the scratches made by the claws of tigers may appear, yet, whether it be owing to any noxious quality in the claw itself, to the manner in which the tiger strikes, or any other matter, I have no hesitation in saying, that at least a majority of such as have been under my notice died; and I have generally remarked, that those whose cases appeared the least alarming were most suddenly carried off. I have ever thought the perturbation arising from the nature of the attack to have a considerable share in the fatality alluded to, especially as I never knew any one wounded by a tiger to die without suffering for some days under that most dreadful symptom, a locked jaw! Such as have been wounded to appearance severely, but accompanied with a moderate hæmorrhage, I have commonly found to recover, excepting in the rainy season: at that period I should expect serious consequences from either a bite or a scratch.”. Oriental Sports,

vol. i. p. 52.

Wild beasts were so numerous and fierce in one part of Mexico, among the Otomites, that Fr. Juan de Grijalva says in his time, in one year, more than 250 Indians were devoured by them. "There then prevailed an opinion," he proceeds, "and still it prevails among many, that those tigers and lions were certain Indian sorcerers, whom they call Nahuales, who by diabolical art transform themselves into beasts, and tear the Indians in pieces, either to revenge themselves for some

offences which they have received, or to do them evil, which is the proper condition of the Devil, and an effect of his fierceness. Some traces of these diabolical acts have been seen in our time, for in the year 1579, the deaths of this kind being many, and the suspicion vehement, some Indians were put to the question, and they confessed the crime, and were executed for it. With all this experience and proof, there are many persons who doubt these transformations, and say that the land being mountainous produces wild beasts, and the beasts being once fleshed commit these great ravages. And it was through the weak understandings of the Indians that they were persuaded to believe their conjurors could thus metamorphose themselves; and, if these poor wretches confessed themselves guilty of such a crime, it was owing to their weakness under the torture; and so they suffered for an offence which they had never committed."

"won

Father Grijalva, however, holds with his Father S. Au-gustine, who has said concerning such things, hæc ad nos non quibuscunque qualibus credere putaremus indignum, sed eis referentibus pervenerunt, quos nobis non existimaremus fuisse mentitos. "In the days of my Father S. Augustine," he says, derful things were related of certain inn-keepers in Italy, who transformed passengers into beasts of burden, to bring to their inns straw, barley, and whatever was wanted from the towns, and then metamorphosed them into their own persons, that they might purchase, as customers, the very commodities they had carried. And in our times the witches of Logrono make so many of these transformations, that now no one can doubt them. This matter of the Nahuales, or sorcerers of Tututepec has been confessed by so many, that that alone suffices to make it credible. The best proof which can be had is, that they were condemned to death by course of justice; and it is temerity to condemn the judges, for it is to be believed that they made all due inquiry. Our brethren who have been ministers there, and are also judges of the interior court (that is of the conscience), have all held these transformations to be certain: so that there ought to be no doubt concerning it.

« 前へ次へ »