them, and an account of the Caoinan or funeral cry of the Irish as practised for similar purposes, in Dr A. Clarke’s edition of Mr Harmer’s Observations, before alluded to.  A quotation from that work can scarcely fail to interest the reader, who will be afterwards favoured with a very curious description of what is said by Lawson to have been practised in North Carolina, in which the general point of resemblance is most strikingly displayed.—­“Not only do the relations and female friends, in Egypt, surround the corpse, while it remains unburied, with the most bitter cries, scratching and beating their faces so violently as to make them bloody, and black, and blue; but, to render the hubbub more complete, and do the more honour to the dead person, whom they seem to imagine to be very fond of noise, those of the lower class of people are wont to call in, on these occasions, certain women, who play on tabors, and whose business it is to sing mournful airs to the sound of this instrument, which they accompany with a thousand distortions of their limbs, as frightful as those of people possessed by the devil.  These women attend the corpse to the grave intermixed with the relations and friends of the deceased, who commonly have their hair in the utmost disorder, like the frantic Bacchanalian women of the ancient heathens, their heads covered with dust, their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed with mud, and howling like mad people.”  Now let us hear Lawson.—­“These savages all agree in their mourning, which is to appear, every night, at the sepulchre, and howl and weep in a very dismal manner, having their faces daubed over with light-wood soot, (which is the same as lamp-black) and bears-oil.  This renders them as black as it is possible to make themselves, so that their’s very much resemble the faces of executed men boiled in tar.  If the dead person was a grandee, to carry on the funeral ceremonies, they hire people to cry and lament over the dead man.  Of this sort there are several, that practise it for a livelihood, and are very expert at shedding abundance of tears, and howling like wolves, and so discharging their office with abundance of hypocrisy and art.”  The reader will meet with a pretty full account of the funeral ceremonies among some of the eastern nations, in Dr Scott’s introduction to his recent edition of the Arabian Nights Entertainments.—­E.]

Of the religion of these people, we were not able to acquire any clear and consistent knowledge:  We found it like the religion of most other countries, involved in mystery, and perplexed with apparent inconsistencies.  The religious language is also here, as it is in China, different from that which is used in common; so that Tupia, who took great pains to instruct us, having no words to express his meaning which we understood, gave us lectures to very little purpose:  What we learnt, however, I will relate with as much perspicuity as I can.