FOTIMIOAN CUSTOMS. 109 



to compete with any of the nations over whose territories they 

 were distributed, although, in many other respects, their 

 superiority was once indisputable. To take England, one 

 of their localities, as an example. When our ancestors lived 

 in scattered huts, wore only skins and blue paint, shot at 

 wild beasts with arrows, and tore each other to pieces, much 

 after wild-beast fashion, it is certain that the Formicans' pro- 

 genitors lived in cities, wore polished armour, possessed a sort 

 of artillery, and fought pitched battles. In one respect, 

 however, besides that of their high antiquity, the people of 

 whom we are speaking, although for the most part of eminently 

 terrestrial habits, resemble the natives of the Celestial Empire, 

 namely, in their marked characteristic of stability, understood 

 in the limited sense of standing still, for as were their ancestors, 

 so are their existing descendants, and so will be their sons' 

 sons to the hundred thousandth generation. 



The custom of slave-making, as still sanctioned by the 

 example of civilized and Christian nations, has been always 

 practiced by 'certain tribes of this pigmy people. In some 

 respects, however, our Lilliputian slave-owners are wofully 

 behind-hand, as compared with those of larger stature, espe- 

 cially with the dwellers in a certain Trans- Atlantic Land of 

 Freedom. They know not the meaning of Lynch-law, the 

 sound of a whip is never heard within their territories. The 

 slaves live as well as their possessors, and on some occasions, 

 the common rule of such relationship being reversed, would 



