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1702. [Gen. xxii. 13.] BARTRAM found Grape-Vines of a peculiar species entangled in shrubs or under-growth on extensive open plains in America; the bunches of fruit were very large, as were the grapes that composed them when ripe they are of various colors, and their juice sweet and rich. These grape-vines do not climb into high trees, but creep along from one low shrub to another, extending their branches to a great distance horizontally round about; and it is very pleasing to behold the clusters pendant from the vines, almost touching the earth; indeed some of them lie on the ground. Trav. p. 398.

1703. Compelled for ever to wander, and not always being able to transport the whole of their provisious, the Laplanders place them in magazines erected in the midst of the woods, with four stakes supporting a roof. Urged by necessity, and to appease his hunger, a Laplander eats in these magazines whatever he chooses, but never carries any thing away. At the distance of some paces from the cot of the Lapland-mountaineer stands a certain vessel, called in Lapland Losavve, raised on beams set on end, where rein-deer skins, &c. are put upon cross-placed boughs of various trees.

PINKERTON'S Coll. part ii. pp. 374, 393.

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If we credit the account the Creeks give of themselves, this place (or site of a town on the Oakmulge fields) is remarkable for being the first town or settlement, when they sat down (as they term it) or established themselves, after their emigration from the west, beyond the Mississippi, their original native country.

1712. [

BARTRAM'S Trav. p. 53.

13.] The Orientals seem to have had the same notion about burying places which prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, namely, that it was ignominious to be buried in another's ground; and therefore every family, the poorer sort excepted, had a sepulchre of their own, nor would suffer others to be interred in them. Le CLERC.

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1715. [Gen. xxiii. 16.] The practice of weighing money is general in Syria, Egypt, and all Turkey. No piece, however effaced, is refused there: the merchant draws out his scales, and weighs it, as in the days of Abraham, when he purchased his sepulchre. In considerable payments, an agent of exchange is sent for, who counts paras by thousands, rejects pieces of false money, weighs all the sequins, either separately or together. (VOLNEY'S Trav. vol. ii. p. 425.) — The merchants of Mocha, finding it too troublesome to count all the money, receive payment of great sums by weight, and the seraf, or broker of the Imam, often examines the weights of the other brokers, or merchants.

See No. 586.

NIEBUHR'S Trav. vol. i. p. 191.

1716. [18. Before the city] In Arabia the wallı of the ordinary houses are of mud mixed with dung; and the roof is thatched with a sort of grass which is there very common. Around by the walls within is a range of beds made of straw, on which, notwithstanding their simplicity, a person may either sit or lie commodiously enough. Such a house is not sufficiently large to be divided into separate apartments; it has seldom windows, and its door is only a straw mat. When an Arab has a family and cattle, he builds for their accommodation several such huts, and incloses the whole with a strong wooden fence. The cities of Arabia therefore, cannot in population be proportionate to their

extent.

Ibid p. 255.

1717. [19, 20.] All sepulchres, when once a body was interred therein, were esteemed as religious and sacred, and were not to follow the possession of the field.

Abr. Phil. Trans. vol. viii. p. 65.

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1726. [28. Her mother's house] Beth (Hebr.), apartment or lodging. — Thus, in the book of Esther (ii. 9) the house of the women was probably a part of the king's house. (See Univer. Hist. vol. iii. p. 598.) — Then the damsel ran to her mother's apartment, and told these things.

See No. 562.

1720. [- 4.] Thus for sons the Father, or even the Mother, chose wives; as is indeed still the case in the East, where the young pair are, for the most part, unacquainted with each other before marriage, and come together merely in obedience to the will of their parents: compare Gen. xxi. 21. Exod. xxi. 9-11. Judg. xiv. 2 -4. Smith's MICHAELIS, vol. i. P. 444.

1727. [- 29, 30.] In the East, and especially in Arabia, the elder brother is the second father of the family. See Dr. GEDDES, on 1 Sam. xx. 29.

1728. [50.] Thus in after-ages, the Athenian law, to legalize a marriage, required that the bride's father, or ber

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1733.

Le BRUYN'S Trav. in Persia, vol. i. p. 214.

Veils probably were at first assumed as a defence or protection against the sun, dust, &c. -During a part of the year, it is not possible to go abroad into the streets of Pekin without having the face covered with a veil, on account of the sand with which the air is loaded. (St. PIERRE'S Studies of Nature, vol. i. p. 211.) — When ISBRAND IDES arrived on the frontiers of China, at that part of the crest of the Asiatic Continent which is the most elevated, "Every day," says he, "at noon regularly, there blows a strong gust of wind for two hours together, which joined to the sultry heat of the sun, parches the ground to such a degree, that it raises a dust almost insupportable."

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1741. [34. He did eat and drink] Profanely, of the first-fruits which Jacob was preparing for sacrificial or sacramental uses. See Lev. xxiii. 14 compared with Heb. xii. 16.

See No. 520, 519, 525, 517, 526.

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1747. [Gen: xxvii. 1.] Dr. RUSH, in his Medical Inquiries and Observations, p. 312, mentions a case equally extraordinary: Adam Riffle of Pennsylvania, about the 68th year of his age, without sickness, it seems, gradually lost his sight, and continued entirely blind for the space of twelve years; at the end of which period, his sight fully returned to its wonted vigor; without the use of any appropriate means, and without any visible change in the appearance of his eyes.

See Sinclair's Code of Health, vol. i. p 72.

1748. About the age of 36, remarks the ingenious Dr. WATERHOUSE, the lean man usually becomes fatter, and the fat man leaner. Again, between the years 43 - 4 and 50, his appetite fails, his complexion fades, and his tongue is apt to be furred on the least exertion of body or mind. At this period his muscles become flabby, his joints weak, bis spirits droop, and his sleep is imperfect and unrefreshing. After suffering under these complaints, a year,

18.] I am Esau, thy first-born by representation, as the Lord Chancellor of England sometimes represents the king.

N. B. It should be recollected that Esau had sold his birthright to Jacob.

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1755. [Gen. xxviii. 17.] This is none other but the house of God; and this is the gate of heaven.

From this, compared with other passages of Sacred Scripture, there is reason to conclude, that religion shifts her seat from place to place on the surface of the earth, regularly according to the precession of the equinoxes. - By the observations of Aristarchus, Euxodus, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Halley, and other excellent astronomers, antient and modern; it is proved, that the axis of the earth rolls without ceasing, always parallel to itself, about the pole of the ecliptic, from which it is distant, in every place, twenty-three degrees and a half, inclining to the plane of the ecliptic; and that the equinoxes by degrees proceed to the southern parts, having nothing to do with the ecliptic: so that when the equinoxes come to the Tropic of Capricorn, there is a necessity of their proceeding further to the Antarctic Pole, and so afterwards by turning about to the Arctic. Whence it comes to pass that, by little and little, and insensibly, different and different regions are placed under the axis, and the inhabitants of the zone, now frigid, are brought back and turned to the equinoctial line; and, at length, the place of the Arctic Pole to the Antarctic, and the East to the West, which HERODOTUS (lib. ii. cap. 142), from the sacred authority and mysterious monuments of the Egyptian priests, testifies to have happened formerly twice; though one such conversion of the stars, and reduction of all parts into the same situation, requires a revolution of about thirty-six thousand years. In this we perceive an admirable providence, that the same part of the earth should not be condemned to so long a cold, but that each, and every region, might partake in its time, of all the aspects of the sun; and, at the same time, of the benign influences of that SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, which is a light to the Gentiles for Salvation unto the ends of the earth.

1756.

See TOLAND's Pantheisticon, pp. 36-40.

The word Gate, which is a part of Asiatic palaces by far the most conspicuous and magnificent, and upon adorning of which immense sums are often expended, is an expression, that, throughout the East, is figuratively used for the mansion itself. Indeed it seems to be thus denominated with singular propriety, since, as those who have resided in Asiatic regions well know, it is under those Gates that conversations are holden, that hospitality to the passing traveller is dispensed, and the most important transactions in commerce frequently carried on. Astronomy, deriving its birth in Asia, and exploring nature and language for new symbols, soon seized upon this allegorical expression as highly descriptive of her romantic ideas, and the title

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transferred from terrestrial houses to the spheres. Hence, in the Arabian astronomy, those coustellations in the Heavens, nearest which the moon, during her mouthly revolution, remains every night, are called the Mansions of the Moon, which, according to the Arabian computation,

amount in number to twenty-eight, according to the Indian, to only twenty-seven, mansions. The expression occurs frequently in holy writ, often in the former sense, and some times even in the astronomical allusion of the word. In the former acceptation we read, in Esther ii. 19, of the Jew Mordecai sitting in the King's GATE; in Lam. v. 14, that the elders have ceased from the GATE: and in Ruth iii. 2, it is used in a sense remarkably figurative; all the GATE (that is house) of my people know thou art virtuous. In the second acceptation, the word as well as the attendant symbol itself, to our astonishment, occur in the account of Jacob's vision of the LADDER WHOSE TOP REACHED ΤΟ HEAVEN. A similar idea occurs in Isaiah xxxviii. 10. I shall go to the GATES of the grave; and in Matt. xviii. 18. The GATES of hell shall not prevail against it: nor is it impossible but our blessed Lord himself might speak in allusion to the popular notion of the two astronomical GATES celestial and terrestrial, when, in Matt. vii. 13, he said, Enter ye in at the strait GATE; for, wide is the GATE and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat: because strait is the GATE and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. These gates may, therefore, be considered as houses or spheres, through which the soul passes in her course to the centre of light and felicity. See No. 532, 536.

MAURICE'S Indian Antiquities,

p. 319.

1757. [Gen. xxix. 2, 10. Watered the flocks] Dr. CHANDLER, in his Travels in the Lesser Asia, speaks of a goat's skin with the hair on made use of as a bucket, which was distended by a piece of wood, to which the rope was fixed; and which was left at a well by a benevolent peasant (who had thence drawn water for them) for their use while he was absent. See HARMER's Observations, vol. ii. p. 264.

In the course of the day, Captain Keys went on shore to the dola's and found a considerable number of skins filled with water, lying on the beach, and sheltered from the sun by a covering of mats. These, being sent on board, nearly completed the supply he wanted; and the charge proved very reasonable, as the dola demanded only one dollar for twenty-seven skins.

Lord VALENIA's Trav. in Abyssinia, p. 245.

1758. [2, 4.] In Arabia, and other places, they cover up their wells of water, lest the sand, which is put into motion by the winds, should fill up and quite stop them.

CHARDING

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