ble God, who, they suppose, has the disposal of the weather; and therefore invoke her for such as they desire. They assemble for her worship at the full and new moon: no inclemency of the weather prevents them. They continue the whole night, and till pretty far the next day, in shouting, screaming, jumping, stamping, dancing, clapping their hands, and using such expressions as these: We salute you-you are welcome-grant us fodder for our cattle, and milk in abundance! They likewise adore, as a benign deity, a certain insect, peculiar, as it is said, to the Hottentot countries. This animal is of the dimension of a child's little finger, the back green, the belly speckled with white and red; it is provided with two wings, and has on its head two horns. To this little winged deity they render the highest adoration. If it honour a village with a visit, the inhabitants assemble about it in transports of devotion. They sing and dance round it, troop after troop, in the highest extacy, throwing to it the powder of an herb, which our botanists call spirea. They cover, at the same time, the whole area of the village, the tops of the cots, and every thing out of doors, with the same powder. They likewise kill two fat sheep, as a thankoffering, for the same honour. They suppose that the arrival of this insect in a village brings happiness and prosperity to all the inhabitants, and that their offences, to that moment,are buried in oblivion. If it happen to light upon a Hottentot, he is distinguished and revered as a saint, and the delight of the deity, ever after. His neighbours glory that they have so holy a man among them, and publish the matter far and near. The fattest ox belonging to the whole village is immediately killed for a thank-offering, and the time is turned into a festivity, in honour of the deity and saint. They also pay a religious veneration to their saints and men of renown departed. They do not honour them with tombs, statues, or inscriptions; but consecrate mountains, fields, and rivers, to their memory. When they pass by those places, they implore the protection of the dead for them and their cattle; they muffle their heads in their mantles, and sometimes dance round those places, singing and clapping their hands. They worship also an evil deity, whom they look upon as the father of all their plagues. They therefore coax him, upon apprehension of any misfortune, with the offering of an ox or sheep; and at other times perform divers acts of worship, to wheedle and keep him quiet.* The Moravian missionaries have been assiduous in their endeavours to convert the Hottentots. And by an account received from the bishop of the Moravian church at Bethlehem, dated May 16. 1801, it appears, that in the years 1799 and 1800, fiftyseven adults and seventeen children were baptized, and twenty-five admitted to the holy communion; sixty-eight per sons were added to the candidates for baptism; six pair of the converts were married, and seven souls departed this life. The congregation (baptized) was 301 souls: 1234 souls lived about them to hear the word of God. January 8. 1800, a new church was dedicated, in which about 1,500 can meet under cover. Many of the low Dutch settlers are become the brethren's friends, and frequent their public meetings with a seeming concern for the salvation of their souls. AFRICAN ISLANDS. MADAGASCAR. THE inhabitants of this island believe God to be the author of all good, and the devil the author of all evil.† There are also some mahometans in this island; but here are no mosques, temples, nor any stated worship, except some of the inhabitants of this place offer sacrifices of beasts on particular occasions; as, when sick, when they plant yams or rice, when they hold their assemblies, circumcise their children, declare war, enter into new-built houses, or bury their dead. Many of them observe the jewish sabbath, and give some account of the sacred history, the creation and fall of man, as also of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and David; whence it is conjectured they are descended of jews who formerly settled there, though none knows how or when.‡ CAPE VERD ISLANDS, CA NARIES AND MADEIRAS. The inhabitants of these islands are Roman Catholics. There is a bishop at Madeira whose income far exceeds the governor's. The secular priests on this island are about twelve hundred. There are likewise sixty or seventy Franciscan friars in four monasteries. About three hundred *Watts's Human Reason, p. 152-155. Middleton's Geography. Guthrie, p.747. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RELIGIONS OF AMERICA. EVIOUS to an account like destroyed them again; of the present denomina- and then made another coutions in the United States of ple out of a tree, from whom America, a short sketch of the descended all the nations of Aborigines will not, perhaps, the earth: but how they came be unentertaining to some to be scattered and dispersed readers. The following ac- into countries so remote from counts are extracted from one another, they cannot tell. valuable authors. They believed their supreme God to be a good being, and paid a sort of acknowledgment to him for plenty, vic tory, and other benefits. But there is another power, which they call hobamocko, (in English the devil) of whom they stood in greater awe, and worshipped merely from a principle of fear.-The immortality of the soul was universally believed among them. When good men die, they said, their souls went to Kichtan, where they meet their friends, and enjoy all manner of pleasures. When wicked The natives of New England believed not only a plurality of Gods, who made and govern the several nations of the world, but they made deities of every thing they imagined to be great, powerful, beneficial, or hurtful to mankind; yet they conceived an almighty Being, who dwells in the southwest regions of the heavens, to be superior to all the rest. This almighty Being they called Kichtan, who at first, according to their tradition, made a man and woman out of a stone; but upon some dis men die, they went to Kichtan also; but are commanded to walk away, and to wander about in restless discontent and darkness for ever." At present the Indians in New England are almost wholly extinct.+ Mr. Brainerd, who was a truly pious and successful missionary among the Indians on the Susquehannah and Delaware rivers, in 1744, gives the following account of their religious sentiments :"After the coming of the white people, the Indians in New Jersey, who once held a plurality of deities, supposed there were only three, because they saw people of three kinds of complexion; viz. English, Negroes, and themselves. It is a notion pretty generally prevailing among them, that it was not the same God made them who made us; but that they were created after the white people; and it is probable they suppose their God gained some special skill by seeing the white people made, and so made them better; for it is certain they look upon themselves and their methods of living, which they say their God expressly prescribed for them, vastly preferable to the white people and their methods. With regard to a future state of existence, many of them imagine that the chichung, i. e. the shadow, or what survives the body, will at death go southward, to some unknown, but curious place, and enjoy some kind of happiness; such as hunting, feasting, dancing, or the like: and what they suppose will contribute much to their happiness in the next state, is, that they shall never be weary of these entertainments. Those who have any notion about rewards and sufferings in a future state, seem to imagine that most will be happy; and that those who are not so will be punished only with privation, being excluded from the walls of the good world, where happy spirits reside. Those rewards and punishments they suppose' to depend entirely on their behaviour towards mankind, and have no reference to any thing which relates to the worship of the supreme Being." *Neale's History of New England, vol. i. pp. 33-35. + Belknap's History of New Hampshire, vol. i. p. 124. This account is extracted from Brainerd's Journal. He rode about four thousand miles among the Indians, and was sometimes five or six weeks together without seeing a white person. |