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There is a tradition, which the author learnt when in Peru, from an intelligent Indian of Cuzco, that one of the Incas, the immediate descendant of the sacred MANCO CAPAC and MAMA OCOLLO, caused a chain of gold to be made of enormous size and weight which was kept in the temple of the Sun either at Puno or Cuzco, and borne in procession on the shoulders of one hundred men on State occasions during the Sovereignty of the Incas; and that after What are the round towers still extant in the Orkneys and extreme northern parts of Scotland? To what period can we ascribe the monumental pillar that existed at Ruthwell in Dumfrieshire, in the seventeenth century. It was about twenty-five feet high, including the pedestal; on the four sides of which were hieroglyphics, such as birds, foliage, and marine animals, besides letters supposed to be Runic it was held in such high veneration by the people, that a decree of the General Assembly of the Kirk, in 1644, ordered it be destroyed as an object of idolatry. The festival of Bel-t'ing is still held in Scotland, and in the northern parts of Ireland, on the evening of the 1st May, and also on the 21st June in Ireland, and even in England it is customary on the evening of May-day to light fires on the hills. "Bel-tein or ing signifies the fire of Baael, the worship of which deity formerly existed in England, Ireland, and Scotland; La na Baael tina and nina Baael tina are the day and eve of Baael's fire, in the Irish language. This pagan ceremony of lighting these fires in honor of Belus (or Jah) gave its name to the entire month of May, which is to this day called Mina Baael tine or t'ing. (O'Bryan's Dictionary, 4th edition, 1768). Sir John Sinclair says, in his statistics of Scotland-" On the 1st May, which is called Baael-t'ing day, all the boys meet on the moors, they cut a sod and make a round trench that will hold the whole company, they then kindle a fire in the middle and dress a custard of eggs and milk, they then knead a cake of oatmeal and toast it at the embers. After eating the custard, they divide the cake into as many pieces as the company consists of in number: one piece is blackened with charcoal, and all are put into a bonnet; whoever draws the black bit is the one to be sacrificed to Baael, which in the present day innocently consists in his being compelled to leap three times through the flames, round which the company dance.† On the 21st of June fires are made on the tops of the hills, and every member of the family is made to jump through the flames. The custom is also, or was till lately, observed in Lancashire, also in Ayrshire, and even in Sweden." This idolatrous ceremony is frequently mentioned in the Bible as being practiced by the followers of Baael.

+ Query, is this dance the origin of the Pyrrhic dance?

the shameful, treacherous conduct of Pizzaro,* the

* Pizzaro first caused his captive Atahualpa to be kept in close confinement until ransomed by an enormous amount of gold, which he no sooner received, than at the instigation of that bigotted and infamous scoundrel-priest, Valverde, he ordered the poor, innocent Inca to be cruelly murdered. He was condemned to be burnt alive as a heretic, but by a blasphemous mockery of religion was promised that if he would be baptised and embrace the Christian faith he should merely be strangled at the stake, and then he would be admitted into the joys of heaven. It is said— although in the same sense attributed to Hatuey, a Cazique of Hispaniola, when taken in arms against the Spaniards at the eastern part of Cuba, and condemned to be burnt alive-that Atahualpa enquired, after having been baptized, where the baptized Spaniards went to after death, and was told to Heaven, when he emphatically replied, "then I would rather go to Hell! to avoid the company of your accursed race." It is to be hoped that a retributive Providence reversed this ideal wish to poor Atahualpa's future bliss in "another and a better world!" Within the last fifty-three years the Inquisition, or "Holy Office" as it was called par excellence, was in full swing in Spain. The prisoners who differed in opinion as to the Roman Catholic faith were, after imprisonment and mock trial by the inquisitors, handed over to the secular arm and thrown into the common prison, then loaded with chains and brought before the civil judge, who, after asking in what religion they intended to die, pronounced sentence accordingly; and these scoundrels (playing into the hands of the villainous Church party) allowed those heretics, who wished to be baptised in the Roman faith, the privilege of being merely strangled at the stake, and then burnt to ashes; whilst those who persisted in differing from the Church of Rome, although firm believers in Almighty God and his Son Jesus Christ as the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind, now called Protestants, were ordered to be burnt alive, for the honor and glory of God! They were then marched to the place of execution and the negative and relapse being first strangled and then burnt, the others were bound with chains to the iron grating, above the stake, and their beards and hair, chins, lips, noses, ears, and eyebrows singed and burnt off with torches or blazing furze bushes; this was called "making the dogs' beards," the fires were then kindled below their feet, and the poor wretches literally roasted alive! These diabolical acts were beheld with satisfaction and superstitious joy by the villainous priests and emissaries of the Roman Pontiff and also by the bigotted priest-ridden multitude, who were taught to believe that such barbarous cruelty was "doing God service!"+ There are no doubt

A fulfilment of our Saviour's word as set forth in the 2nd verse of the xvi. chap. of St. John's Gospel.

priests of the temple fearing that their gold chain would be taken from them by this merciless robber and his followers, had it thrown into the lake Tichicaca, where the author was informed it had been frequently swept for, but up to the present day without success. The early ships of the Mediterranean, according to Grotius, Bochart, and Elsner had double rudders suspended and attached to the ship's stern by chains. Xerxes is said to have chained or fettered the Hellespont, and flogged it in consequence of his bridge of boats having been twice destroyed by rough weather some 2,354 years ago. Now we cannot suppose for a moment that this wonderful Persian monarch who, as recorded by Herodotus, led such an enormous army into Greece, and had some thousands of vessels at his command, could have been such an idiot as he has been here represented it is therefore probable that as all Oriental history was written more or many Roman Catholics now existing who would gladly see this dreadful Inquisition, with all its horrors, re-established even in England and Ireland-should Popery ever again get into power-which God forbid ! For what would become of us poor Protestants, Nonconformists, Wesleyans, &c., it is frightful to contemplate! Even those sham Roman Catholics, the Ritualists of the Purchas and Machonochie school, would stand but a poor chance, and probably be amongst the first for strangulation at the stake or roasting alive! The cruel, savage rites of the Druids, in the days of the ancient Britons, who filled wickerwork idols with living human beings, and then set fire to them; or the priests of Cronus or Moloch, who invented the red hot brazen idol, and roasted their victims alive in honour of Jehovah, had more excuse for their ignorant cruelties than those self-righteous scoundrels of the Church of Rome, who tortured and treacherously murdered their victims because they differed in opinion with them as to the mode of worshipping the Redeemer! in order to support "the congregation of the Propoganda fidei" for the sale of indulgences, dispensations, &c.--which is still rampant in our midst! Pio Nono is said to be "a link of St. Peter's Chain," yet the papers tell us that this "infallible representative of Our Saviour on earth lately refused to wash the feet of the 'poor beggars' of students, owing to having lost his temporal power, and that when his emaculate Deputy Franchi touched their naked toes with a sponge they grinned from ear to ear!"-Spongia mirabilis !!!

less in a figurative sense, and as he had no doubt a vast number of engineers from Egypt, and workers in bronze and iron from Phoenicia amongst his followers, he may have caused a chain to be forged that would reach across the narrowest part of the Hellespont, the breadth of which the author ascertained from Mr. Calvert, H.B. Majesty's Consul for the Dardanelles, when he last visited the castles there, was but little over half a mile. Captain Spratt, R.N., the celebrated surveyor, in 1855, made the exact distance from the beach at the mouth of the Rhodius river at Chanac-Kaleh-si to the beach at Namazied, 662 fathoms. Now this scarcely exceeds three-fourths more chain-cable than each sailing ship of 3,000 tons is compelled to carry according to Lloyd's rules in the present day,* and this chain supposing it to have been 700 fathoms in length, to allow for curvature and shore fastenings, could have been well supported across the bows of as many vessels as might be required to form the bridge, trussed by diagonal chains from the central portion to inshore anchors or the shore itself. It is said by Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World, that Xerxes used 672 galleys to form his bridge, if so, there must have been two if not three tiers of vessels. The depth in the centre of the strait at this point is fifty fathoms, shoaling to fourteen and thirteen fathoms inshore on either side; and supposing this trans-pontine chain to have been so made, and thus used, which seems very feasible, it may be figuratively expressed that Xerxes both chained or fettered the Hellespont, and, as our American cousins would say, "whipped" or flogged it into subjection! It is not improbable also that many of his followers were Lemniotes, who were famed for their skill in the working of iron. Vulcan himself, so mythological history tells us, first established his head-quarters *See pages 36, 37.

in the island of Lemnos, after being kicked out of Heaven by Jupiter ;* and Herodotus informs us that one Glaucus, a native of Chios, invented the art of inlaying iron. He also states that "the Phocæians were the first of the Hellenes who undertook long voyages in vessels they built called Ponteconters or fifty oared galleys;" and, according to the same authority, as a proof that these people knew something about the manufacture of iron, perhaps even to puddling it, on their return to Phocæa, "after destroying the garrison which the Persians had left to guard the city, they sunk a mass of red hot iron into the sea, left their native city again, and swore not to return until the iron should re-appear." The object of this resolve does not appear, unless we may consider it to be the type of iron ships! but a number of these famous Sailors, who had founded Marseilles (as Massillia), colonised Corsica, and visited Tarcessus or Tarshish, beyond the pillars of Hercules, we are told "were seized with regret, and violating their oaths, sailed back to Phocæa;" but whether they recovered the mass of iron or not, or whether it was pig, sheet or bar iron, and remained at the bottom or floated on the return of the renegades in the form of iron galleys, we are left to our own conjectures to imagine.†

When the author last visited Phocæa, now called Fokia, and in some old charts Fouges and Foges, now a *The poet tells us that Vulcan also had an establishment in Sicily where he worked for his old master, viz:

"When Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove,

In Etna's roaring glow,

Neptune petitioned he might prove
Their use and power below.

But finding in the boundless deep,

Such terrors did but idly sleep;

He with them armed Britannia's hand,

To guard from foes her native land."-Sea Song.

Query-Were these Phocæans the original "Old Fogies?"from "Phoca," a sea-lion, sea-dog, sea-calf or seal; as "Old Tar"

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